How long will my import of data take? 

Processing data for ingestion can take a varied amount of time to complete. This article is provided to help you to understand why some actions take time, and your options - if any exist, on improving the time frame it takes to import.

Importing Legacy Data items is a common everyday process here on the View archive platform, and our cloud optimized infrastructure is designed to provide the best value of service for everyone.

When ingesting data to an archive account, there can be multiple factors that will need to be taken into account that can affect how long an import process will take to complete.

Some of those factors are:

1. Number of folders within the PST file structure
2. Size of a PST file
3. Complexity of a folder structure housing the messages
4. The number of messages, and the documents within the messages
5. Compression
6. Encryption

All of these factors are taken into consideration when we process your data. Other factors that are taken into consideration are: extracting compressed / encrypted data, conversions, securely storing, encrypting and indexing all the files.

When we are ready to process your data for import, we assign a set number of resources to churn through the data. The number of compute power resources utilized are aligned to the standard import costs that have been provided to you. 

Guideline Time frames for Import:

Import Size	Estimated Timeframe*
Less that 25GB	Upto 2 weeks
25GB to 50GB	3 weeks
50GB to 100GB	4 weeks
100GB to 1TB	6 weeks
Over 1TB	Please Contact your service provider for an estimated completion time.

 * From receipt of ALL the data to be imported. These are rough estimates and should not be considered a commitment or SLA.

FAQ’s 

Why do some imports go faster than others?

Once files are converted into a standard MIME/RFC.822 format they are inserted into a queuing service for secure archiving and indexing.  The processing rate varies at this stage is based upon a few factors.  They include:

• Size/profile of email attachments that go through a text extraction service.
• Availability of excess computing services.
• Capacity consumed by day to day archiving activities (daily journaling, exports, other import tasks, etc.)

 What can be done to help improve the efficiency of importing this data?

Supply messages in EML format. The most efficient method to process any email data is to have provided this data to Sonian as a standard MIME/RFC.822 format (EML). 

If you are about to leave an existing archive service and use PST supplied data, then we have a preferred naming convention for the PST data to be prepared as, please refer to the following document located here: http://goo.gl/JVNCI

In addition, we recommend that single PST files do not exceed 20GB, and are proved not to be corrupt if attempted to open via an outlook client. 

PST Files should NOT be password protected. Password protected PST files cannot be processed by the service and may require that the data is re-submitted without any passwords.

Can we speed things up?

If there is a need for you to provide data that has urgent e-discovery needs then YES, the timeline for importing your data can improved by utilising additional/dedicated compute resources at an extra premium cost to you.

Backup considerations

Any data you supply, whether exported from your mail servers or standing legacy data from a file store, ensure you retain a copy of all data before you send, especially if you plan to send data on a USB hard-drive.