Sonasoft works for Microsoft SQL Server < — > Microsoft Exchange Server
So, to the extent that the IRS uses Sonasoft, it’s where the IRS is using Microsoft Exchange Server.
Using Sonasoft, the full e-mail message (stem to stern) is stored in a Microsoft SQL database (that is using a Hard Drive Array as the physical storage media), while a “stub” of the e-mail message is stored on a Microsoft Exchange Server, and the user sees that “stub” listed in the Outlook window on the user’s workplace computer.
The user has only to click on the “stub”, and the full message is downloaded ... Sonasoft- Microsoft SQL Server — > Microsoft Exchange Server — > user’s workplace computer — > Outlook program.
The Sonasoft sales pitch, is that the e-mail is always backed up, and the e-mail archive is always available ... instead of being on tapes stored away on shelves that have to be manually accessed for recovery. Also, because the complete corpus of the e-mail is not stored on the Microsoft Exchange Server, then the backup of the Microsoft Exchange Server uses less storage space, takes less time, and costs less.
Other backup software *could* back up the Microsoft Exchange Server itself, with all, or portions of, what it holds.
The Microsoft SQL Server collection of an organization’s e-mail, exists on a Hard Drive Array, and the matrix, in effect, of Sonasoft < — > Microsoft SQL Server < — > Hard Drive Array is replicated at least once, existing on some other Hard Drive Array at another geographic location.
To wit: The organization’s e-mail in full, exists on at least 2 Hard Drive Arrays, 1 ea. at different geo-locations, and it’s all live.
If at Hard Drive Array A, drive “A001” fails, then at Hard Drive Array B, the replication of “A001” ... being “B001” ... still has the data. One presumes, that the loss of “A001” does not take down with it, the remote “B001”.
The Sonasoft Way, is to always have at least an A and a B, but there is no limitation on having further replication: C, D ... and still keeping for long-term, some hard drives or tape drive media.
Still, we are given to understand, that if the IRS was using Sonasoft for maintaining Lerner’s e-mails, then BOTH A and B would have had to fail, in order to justify “the hard drive crashed, and thus ‘no e-mail.’” With the exception, that a command could delete all the e-mail, if a higher-up with policy authority allowed the command.
Something like that.
Thanks.
Then whoever is pressing the inquiry was badly misinformed or they would have immediately shot down the excuse about Lerner’s HD being recycled.
That would at best just be holding a cached, offline copy of the emails.
The SQL Server and Exchange hard drives would not only be in RAID configuration as you mentioned, but most likely very high capacity and also high speed, as well as being matched, plus be non-standard in that they would be designed not to do “heroic” data recovery attempts which does not work well with RAID. So they would be expensive, typically have a very long life cycle, and the possibility of them simply being trashed is very, very unlikely.
Heck, hardware is not my specialty and even I know that. What level of advisers does this inquiry have??? How could they let the IRS prattle on about Lerner’s hard drive for more than 10 seconds...