In many customer conversations, the question repeatedly arises as to whether there is a possibility of migrating an existing e-mail archive from another manufacturer to Benno MailArchiv. This is of course possible, often very simple, and thanks to the open and generic concepts that characterize Benno MailArchiv, it can also be implemented quickly.

How quickly or easily an existing legacy system can be migrated to Benno MailArchiv ultimately has little to do with Benno MailArchiv itself. Because the crucial question is whether and how the emails can be exported or extracted from the legacy system

Briefly about the background: Benno MailArchiv basically always reads all emails to be archived file by file from the import spool directory "/srv/benno/inbox". (Our tools, such as benno-pop3, benno-smtp, etc., also ultimately store the emails received by them "only" in the spool directory /srv/benno/inbox, from where Benno MailArchiv picks them up and processes them (= permanently archived)).

If emails can be exported from a legacy system in such a way that they are exported to /srv/benno/inbox in the form "one email per file", the import into Benno MailArchiv is immediately and directly possible. If the legacy system exports a Maildir tree or an mbox file, for example, the migration path is also very simple: Maildir is a directory with lots of individual mail files. These can simply be copied recursively into Benno's inbox (/srv/benno/inbox). mbox is a file in which all emails are sequentially combined into one file. In this case, the mbox file only needs to be "unpacked" (or broken down) into individual files.
If the email archive to be replaced (e.g. Outlook PST files) can be exported, the emails would have to be extracted from there using appropriate tools and transferred to Benno MailArchiv (/srv/benno/inbox) file by file.

The more open the legacy system to be migrated is structured, the smoother and more seamless the migration to Benno MailArchiv will be! Benno MailArchiv is a system built entirely on Open Source, open interfaces, and open standards (generally: generic concepts). With Benno MailArchiv, everything is straightforward and flexible. Emails to be archived (regardless of the source) simply need to be stored as EML files in /srv/benno/inbox. From this point on, Benno MailArchiv takes over and handles everything else.

If a migration from Benno MailArchiv to another system is ever to be carried out: The open interfaces and formats of Benno MailArchiv guarantee your freedom and flexibility! Due to its openness, exporting emails from Benno MailArchiv is very simple. Basically, the user company retains full control over all data. For example, it is always possible to make all archived emails visible and readable using only the underlying operating system's tools. With Benno MailArchiv, there is no vendor lock-in. Any kind of technology or manufacturer dependency when using Benno MailArchiv is definitely excluded.