Review: PivotStor's All-In-One Approach To Mail Archiving
For businesses, e-mail is a critical application, requiring regular maintenance and security updates to protect from malware, zombie networks, and hackers. Archiving is also necessary, thanks to compliance regulations. Instead of deploying a variety of solutions and appliances that all work together with the mail server, solution providers can look at a blended solution from San Diego, Calif.-based PivotStor.
PivotStor offers the EP-Series appliances as a single all-in-one product that handles automated encryption, anti-spam and anti-virus filtering, archiving, and digital signatures. The storage vendor has an EP appliance to fit all sizes. The book-sized EP-50 supports up to 100 mailboxes and is ideal for the SMB or the branch office. On the other end of the spectrum, the 2U EP-2500+, supporting over 2500 users, would better fit the enterprise.
The company shipped the EP-1000 to the Test Center for review. The 1U Intel Xeon server came with two Gbytes of memory, two Gigabit Ethernet cards, and three 500-Gbyte hard drives with RAID 5 support. While the server is shipped, by default, with a single dual core processor, it can be upgraded to two processors. This appliance is capable of handling, on average, over 166,000 messages per day (including spam) and is intended primarily for up to 1,000 users. The server also has the option to add 10-Gigabit or FibreChannel adapters for faster connectivity. The EP boxes can also be configured to work with a NAS or a SAN for storage, but this was not tested.
PivotStor uses a modular approach, building functionality in independent modules within the EP-Ware system software. Businesses can choose which option to turn on, based on which licenses were purchased. This simplifies network disruptions during deployment and makes pricing more flexible and appealing. Base prices range from under $1,300 to just under $30,000, based on model. Each module license can be purchased separately (the EP-1000 licenses seem to be in the $600 range) for varying number of users. For example, it is possible to buy an EP-Filter, 100-user pack and an EP-Secure 25-user pack for the same deployment. PivotStor sells exclusively through the channel.
The first module EP Filter applies policy-based anti-virus and anti-spam filtering to all messages that pass through the box. Questionable messages can be stored in quarantine. This reduces the load on the mail server as a bulk of the junk mail is removed and never reaches the system. The EP system can also send challenge messages to unknown senders, forcing them to respond to the message before the mail is delivered. While the Test Center generally does not advocate this approach to reduce spam and malware, it is to PivotStor's advantage that the option is available for businesses that want the Challenge/Response system. EPC allows users to fine-tune the anti-spam policies.
EP Archive is the second module. It automatically saves copies of messages that pass through the gateway and makes them available for search and recovery. Keyword searches can be performed on the subject line, message body text, attachment name, and to some extent, attachment contents. Because the filtering is also performed before this mechanism kicks in, spam and malware are kept out of the archive.
EP Secure handles automated PGP/S/MIME-based encryption on both the archived messages and on outbound messages. If all outbound mail passes through the EP appliance, there is no need to have each individual mail client set up to encrypt messages -- the appliance can handle it for the entire organization.
The appliances are generally deployed at the network gateway between the firewall and the corporate mail server, in either non-bridged or bridged operating modes. In non-bridged mode, the appliance is connected to the network using a single LAN port. In bridged mode, the appliance is physically between the internet gateway and the network switch and the two LAN ports are connected accordingly. The Test Center engineers placed the appliance between the firewall and the switch in bridged mode because this setup has the least impact on existing infrastructure. For proper spam filtering, the firewall was configured to pass all mail directly to the EP appliance, and let the appliance pass the filtered messages to the mail server.
Setup is fairly straightforward, although there's always room for improvement. The appliance requires some ports (commonly used, so nothing new here) to be open: ports 25 (SMTP), 53 (DNS), 80 (HTTP), 123 (NTP), 137, 138, 139, 445 (SMB), 389, 636, 3268 (LDAP, SSL), and 4010 (to access the appliance's console). Currently, initial setup is performed on the server with a monitor and keyboard attached. A text-based menu offers several options, including the one for Network settings. After the network data -- hostname, domain, IP address, netmask, gateway, and DNS servers -- have been entered, the server can be plugged into the network.
The admin console is currently provided as an executable on the accompanying CD. This console handles the rest of the configuration and all the maintenance tasks. After logging in to the console for the first time, the setup wizard collects information about mail domains and local networks. Mail forwarding is also configured at this time.
This process is a little inelegant, requiring the console application to reside locally on the administrator machine. PivotStor said this would eventually be moved to a browser-based application. All other management tasks, not just setup, are also managed from the single console. There's no separate application for the filtering, archiving, or encryption.
The four-pane window provides all the information at once. The log view is quite handy and comforting for administrators used to reading log messages to find errors and problems. The status view gives an overview of what is being filtered and archived, as well how much disk space is being used. This is a good summary to determine the health of the system. The top part of the screen, with its tree view and details, lets the administrator collect details about configuration and what each module is doing. On a given day, just checking the status view would be enough, but having log messages accessible is invaluable.
The EP-series supports various LDAP server types, including Microsoft Active Directory, Lotus Domino, Novell eDirectory, and OpenLDAP. Test Center deployed EP under OpenLDAP and was able to setup user authentication, recipient checks, automatic user creation, and importing email addresses.
The EP-Series seemed to filter out a bulk of the spam and malware pretty well, detecting about 90 percent of junk coming in. Archiving was also very well handled, with the search function working for data retrieval.
Everything PivotStor's EP-Series does can be easily handled by separate appliances. The value in PivotStor's offering lies in it being a unified appliance. It makes archiving affordable for the small customers and easier to manage (and keep track of equipment) for the larger ones.