Network backup & User self sign-up

Question

I'm about to deploy my first Messaging server and I would appreciate some help in the following issues:
- Is there any option in the Messaging Server to allow users to sign themselves up for e-mail (yahoo or hotmail like) or would that functionality have to be written as a separate web application (not my idea, the client wants this)?
- Our customer wants to backup the message store to both tape drives as well as a Network Attached Storage device( Network Appliance). Regarding the network backup, would there be any problems if we were to mount the NAS filesystem to a partition on the Messaging Server and then have cron run imsbackup on a regular basis ?
- It says somewhere in the documentation that imsbackup does not support 2GB files. Does that mean that the Message Store partitions have to be smaller than that ?
Thanks alot

Answer 1

Response from Dave Pickens:
I'm about to deploy my first Messaging server and I would appreciate
some help in the following issues: - Is there any option in the
Messaging Server to allow users to sign
themselves up for e-mail (yahoo or hotmail like) or would that
functionality have to be written as a separate web application (not
my idea, the client wants this)?Would have to write it themselves or use Portal Server's Self Registration
- Our customer wants to backup the message store to both tape drives
as well as a Network Attached Storage device( Network
Appliance). Regarding the network backup, would there be any
problems if we were to mount the NAS filesystem to a partition on
the Messaging Server and then have cron run imsbackup on a regular
basis ?No. My suggestion would be to have cron backup from disk to NAS and then from NAS to tape.
Also don't forget that we can periodically back the database only -- much quicker and allows you to restore the database only rather than all the messages, etc. when only the database is corrupt.
So I'd backup the database a couple times of day from disk to NAS
- It says somewhere in the documentation that imsbackup does not
support 2GB files. Does that mean that the Message Store partitions
have to be smaller than that ?No. Message Store partitions can be many times larger. My general recommendation has been to not exceed 2x the tape capacity in the past. I am leaning now towards a 1 to 1 ration. If you can get 70GB of data on a DLT, then your partitions should be roughly that.
Back up the database itself (aka snapshot) as well to a separate tape.