A global energy company embroiled in litigation while restructuring required creation of multiple user mailboxes from an unsupported EMC SourceOne mail NDMP dump. The original environment’s storage infrastructure was inaccessible, and the volume of requested user mailboxes overwhelmed the existing system’s I/O capabilities (100+). S2|DATA was engaged to solve this challenge using its proprietary TRACS and QuickCull platforms and expertise in handling legacy data backup formats.
“Email archive systems focus so much on rapidly archiving email that extracting data from them is onerous and slow. The benefit of our technical solutions is that 100% of the development emphasis was placed on message extraction, allowing for speeds that are unheard of when it comes to the original product, saving our customers a tremendous amount of both time and money!” – Shawn Strickler, CTO of S2|DATA
The Challenge
There were a number of challenges with this environment.
Unsupported SourceOne Environment: The infrastructure was no longer under active support, complicating direct access to required data
Backup Tape Format Complexity: Secondary backup tapes containing NDMP NAS filer dumps from a Networker system were the only available data source
Large-Scale Mailbox Creation: Hundreds of user mailboxes needed restoration requiring robust processes to ensure accuracy, timeliness, and cost-efficiency
Filtering for Litigation: The restored data needed to comply with legal requirements, including deduplication and responsive data filtering.
The Solution
S2|DATA established a secure facility in its Central London data center to handle the operation. Using TRACS and custom- developed processes, the team delivered a multi-stage solution:
Stage 1: Data Organization and Restoration
Tape Sequencing and Session Mapping: S2|DATA used its proprietary TRACS tool, to organize the NDMP dump tapes into backup sets, identifying the sequencing and backup sessions
Recreation of NAS Snapshots: S2|DATA built a replica of the original NetApp NAS storage subsystem using internal disks large enough to host the restored data, allowing access across multiple servers
Stage 2: Mailbox Creation and Reconstruction
Custom Mailbox Scanning: S2|DATA created and scanned thousands of mailboxes
Attachment Restoration: TRACS automatically identified and reattached single-instance stored mail attachments to their corresponding emails within user mailboxes
Stage 3: Data Reduction and Transfer for Review
Custodian-Level Deduplication: S2|DATA’s used its QuickCull tool to deduplicate the restored mailboxes at the custodian level to eliminate redundant data
Responsive Filtering: S2|DATA filtered mailboxes by responsive date ranges to include only relevant emails, further reducing the dataset size
eDiscovery-Ready Export: S2|DATA transferred the final dataset to a Relativity instance for legal review and eDiscovery
The Outcome
The S2|DATA team achieved the customer’s goals.
Timely Email Restoration: S2|DATA successfully restored thousands of mailboxes within litigation deadlines
Cost Reduction: Deduplication and filtering processes reduced discovery costs by limiting the dataset to unique, relevant emails
Data Integrity:The recreated NAS snapshot and restoration process ensured the accuracy and completeness of the restored email
About S2|DATA
Discover more about S2|DATA’s suite of related services here.
