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

Brief background: Benno MailArchiv always reads all e-mails to be archived file-by-file from the import-spool directory “/srv/benno/inbox”. (Our tools, such as benno-pop3, benno-smtp, etc., ultimately store the e-mails they receive 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 such that they are exported to /srv/benno/inbox in the form “one email per file”, the import into Benno MailArchiv is immediate and instantly possible. Should the legacy system, for example, export a Maildir tree or an mbox file, the migration path is also very simple: Maildir is a directory containing many 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 in a single file. In this case, the mbox file only needs to be “unpacked” (i.e., split) into individual files.
If the legacy email archive (for example) can export Outlook PST files, the emails would need to be extracted there with the help of appropriate tools and handed over 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.