DCS installation - requirements

[BigAnvil]

I've read through some of the DCS Implementation Guide but would appreciate confirmation of what I think to be true.  The only reason we wish to use the product is to classify certain users' emails so they can then be excluded from certain searches.

We are considered a small/medium enterprise.  I would prefer to use virtual servers if possible but we will only deploy Hyper-V VMs and it looks like only Citrix VMs are supported which means we will need to use physical servers.

It's clear we need at least two severs beyond our existing EV deployment - an Enforce server and a Classification server.  I was hoping the product used SQL but since it uses Oracle, we will plan on having the DB reside on one of the two other servers mentioned previously.  It's a bit unclear whether we need servers beyond that.

Are the needs proposed above accurate (without knowing all the specifics of our environment)?  Thanks!

[Kenneth_Adams · Accepted solution]

Hello, BigAnvil; You can run the DCS server components on VMware ESX 3.5 or 4.0 or on physical servers. We don't support Hyper-V at this time. I don't know if support for Hyper-V is being looked into. DCS is supported in One-Tier, Two-Tier and Three-Tier implementations that are determined based on company size. A One-Tier implementation is only recommended for lab environments due to the limitations on available resources. For a company of your size, a Two-Tier implementation should be OK with the database and Enforce servers being installed on the same machine and the Classification server on its own machine. If more capacity is needed, you would add Classification servers before splitting the Enforce server onto its own hardware or VM. DCS can be used for more than just marking messages to be included or excluded from Compliance Accelerator's Random Sampling. You can also specify retention categories so items with certain words or phrases can be retained longer (or shorter) than the default retention category for the archive into which they are stored. If I recall correctly, you can also specify what archive a message should be stored in other than the default archive for the mailbox from which it is archived. You don't have to tag messages for exclusion or inclusion in Random Sampling.