Five areas a hosted Exchange service level agreement must address
Microsoft Exchange hosting services have many advantages, but you need to ensure your service
provider meets some important requirements before moving your email system to the cloud.
Make sure these five important areas are covered in your hosted Exchange service level agreement
(SLA):
1. Mailbox storage: Plan for mailbox storage according to the maximum storage
requirements per user. This should include primary mailboxes, archives and recoverable objects.
Archives are often stored on lower-tiered storage, so factor that in when negotiating unit costs.
You shouldn’t pay tier 1 rates if you’re using a combination of storage types..
Also, make sure there is sufficient geographic distribution of redundant email data copies.
Redundant data in a single
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This was first published in January 2012
location mitigates the risk of server or storage array failure, but not
data center-scale catastrophes. Additionally, storage utilization reports should include actual
usage to accurately assess your capacity needs.
2. Email archiving: Exchange
Server 2010 lets you implement personal
archive mailboxes. Unlike traditional archives, these are owned by end users. User-managed
archives have their place, but you may want a combination of both user archive mailboxes and
traditional archives. Make sure you provider supports your archiving strategy.
3. Email retention policies: You should retain control over your archive and
delete policies; these cover email messages as well as other Exchange objects. Exchange Server lets
you specify rules that define when an object is copied to an archive or deleted within your
environment.
Your SLA should ensure that your retention
policies are enforced across all copies of your data, including redundant copies for failover
and backup tapes for disaster recovery. Also, consider how your policies may change over time. If
business requirements dictate an extension of the retention period, you should be able to modify
your retention rules to estimate the impact on your current storage setup.
4. Security and compliance: Security is one of the most challenging aspects
of email management, so make sure your SLA defines your expectations for mitigating common risks.
Hosted Exchange
services let you delegate responsibility for design decisions, but when it comes to security,
it pays to know -- and require -- specific implementation details.
You’ll certainly receive antivirus scans
on incoming objects, but you should also ensure that malware detection procedures are sufficient.
Does your hosted Exchange provider use an in-house anti-malware system or a third-party service? If
it’s an in-house product, how are the databases and behavioral detection methods updated? How are
malicious links detected? Are whitelists and blacklists available to grant access to or block
traffic from known malicious servers? Ideally, malicious content is filtered before it ever reaches
your Exchange server, reducing the chance that it infects your users or network.
Consider your outbound security needs. Do you really want confidential strategy documents
emailed to an executive’s private email account? Can a disgruntled employee email a sales contact
list to a potential future employer?
Make sure your SLA also includes data-loss
prevention measures. Can your hosted Exchange provider scan outgoing messages according to
rules you specify? For example, you should be able to block messages with social security or credit
card numbers. Simply put, defining your own patterns will help handle data-loss requirements that
are specific to your business.
Reporting is crucial here as well. You should always have access to malware reports, content
that has been blocked in outgoing mail, remediation methods and more. You also need to demonstrate
proper compliance if you find yourself subject to any government or industry regulations.
5. E-discovery: You never want to be on the wrong side of an e-discovery
judgment in court. Mishandling of electronic documents, including email messages, have led to
findings of gross negligence and sizeable judgments against businesses. Your Exchange hosting
provider is your partner in the e-discovery process, so the right applications must be in place to
meet your needs.
E-discovery can prove time consuming, so evaluate the tools your provider supports. Make certain
it has comprehensive search tools and gives you the ability to tag email messages, documents and
other objects. It should also support e-discovery workflow.
Define the minimal set of search, processing and extraction features your company requires.
Remember that email e-discovery may be done in conjunction with e-discovery on your SharePoint
server and other document repositories, so you must be able to consolidate documents from
multiple systems.
The five areas covered in this tip don’t cover everything you’ll need in an SLA, but they’re a
good start.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Sullivan is a technology writer and analyst with Concentrated Technology, LLC.
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