Minimize Subscription & Storage Costs

Purpose

This guide helps Vaultastic administrators and IT teams reduce subscription and storage costs while maintaining compliance, governance, and retrieval requirements.

The core principle is:

Keep only actively accessed data in Active/Open tiers and move long-retention content into lower-cost storage as early as operationally possible.

Storage Principles

Vaultastic supports multiple storage tiers optimized for different access and cost requirements.

Email & Chat Transcript Cost Optimization

Email and chat data typically become the largest contributor to subscription and storage costs. Use selective ingestion and tier movement.

1. Journal Only Required Users into Active Store

Recommendation

Enable journaling only for users who require:

• Regulatory retention

• Supervision

• Legal discovery

• Business continuity requirements

Avoid organization-wide journaling unless required.

Recommended Scenarios

✅ Executives
✅ Customer-facing teams
✅ Regulated business units
✅ Compliance-controlled departments

Avoid

❌ Journaling test accounts
❌ Dormant users
❌ Service accounts
❌ Temporary contractors unless required

Benefit

Reduces ingestion volume and Active Store footprint.

2. Keep Minimum Retention Period in Active Store

Recommendation

Configure lifecycle policies to retain only recent searchable data in Active Store.

Suggested guidance:

After the retention period, automatically move content to a lower-cost tier.

Benefit

Reduces premium storage consumption.

3. Use Domain-Level Movement for Large User Populations

Recommendation

For environments with more than 100 users, prefer Domain-Level Deep Movement instead of managing movement per individual vault.

Move entire domains or business groups together.

Flow

Email / Chat
        ↓
Active Store
        ↓
(Open Store if required)
        ↓
Deep Store / Pvt Store

Benefit

• Lower administration overhead

• Faster policy execution

• Lower operational costs

When to Avoid User-Level Movement

• Large enterprise deployments

• Frequent user onboarding/offboarding

• Multiple administrative teams

4. Use Deep Store for Lowest Managed Cost

Recommendation

Choose Deep Store when:

• Retrieval is infrequent

• Cost optimization is the primary objective

• Managed infrastructure is preferred

• SLA-based retrieval is acceptable

Flow

Active Store
     ↓
Deep Store

Best Fit

• Compliance archives

• Historical email

• Closed investigations

• Long-term retention

Benefit

Lowest managed archive cost while preserving governed retrieval.

5. Use Private Store for Custom Retrieval and Cost Control

Recommendation

Choose Private Store when:

• Storage location must remain customer-controlled

• Retrieval performance needs customization

• Internal storage economics are favorable

Flow

Active Store
     ↓
Open Store (minimum duration)
     ↓
Private Store

Best Practice

Keep content in Open Store only for the minimum transition window.

Benefit

• Predictable storage economics

• Flexible retrieval policies

• Greater infrastructure control

File Repository Cost Optimization

Applies to:

• OneDrive

• Google Drive

• SharePoint

• On-premises file shares

• Other connected repositories

File archives often contain large inactive datasets where early movement yields significant savings.

1. Move Cold File Data Directly to Deep Store

Recommendation

For long-term retention and managed operations:

Flow

OneDrive / Google Drive / SharePoint / On-Prem
                     ↓
                 Deep Store

Use Cases

• Compliance preservation

• Historical project archives

• Inactive repositories

• Legacy content

Benefit

Lowest ongoing archive cost.

2. Use Private Store for Retrieval Flexibility

Recommendation

When retrieval time and storage economics must be controlled.

Flow

OneDrive / Google Drive / SharePoint / On-Prem
                     ↓
                 Open Store
                     ↓
                 Private Store

Best Practice

Configure minimal Open Store duration.

Benefit

Balances retrieval speed and storage economics.

Decision Matrix

Anti-Patterns to Avoid

Avoid these configurations as they increase subscription and storage costs:

❌ Journaling all users without policy justification
❌ Retaining years of content in Active Store
❌ User-by-user movement for large environments
❌ Long-term retention in Open Store
❌ Moving active collaboration repositories to Deep Store prematurely

Implementation Checklist

•  Review journaling scope

•  Define Active Store retention policy

•  Enable automated tier movement

•  Identify domains with >100 users

•  Choose Deep vs Pvt strategy

•  Validate retrieval SLA expectations

•  Monitor archive growth monthly

Following these practices typically results in lower Active/Open tier utilization while maintaining compliance, searchability, and controlled retrieval outcomes.

User Access (CAL License) Cost Optimization

Vaultastic licensing cost is influenced not only by storage consumption but also by the number of users with platform access. Implementing controlled access practices helps reduce subscription costs while maintaining operational efficiency and compliance.

The guiding principle is:

Grant access only when needed, only to the minimum required users, and only for the minimum required duration.

1. Minimize Administrative Access

Recommendation

Restrict administrator roles to only users responsible for archive operations.

Create a small, controlled admin group rather than assigning administrator access broadly.

Recommended Model

Best Practices

• Assign named administrators instead of shared accounts

• Separate operational admin from compliance admin responsibilities

• Review admin assignments quarterly

• Remove access immediately after role changes

Avoid

❌ Making all IT users administrators
❌ Permanent admin access for project teams
❌ Shared administrator credentials

Benefit

Reduces unnecessary CAL consumption and lowers operational risk.

2. Minimize End User Access

Recommendation

Provide Vaultastic access only to users who actively retrieve or supervise archived content.

Do not automatically provision every employee.

Recommended Candidates for Access

✅ Compliance teams
✅ Supervisors
✅ Legal reviewers
✅ Helpdesk retrieval operators
✅ Users with active archive access requirements

Avoid

❌ Organization-wide user provisioning
❌ Permanent access for inactive users
❌ Retaining access after project completion

Benefit

Reduces active licensed user count.

3. Keep Access Duration Short

Recommendation

Use temporary access assignment wherever possible.

Provision access only for:

• Investigations

• Audits

• Legal hold execution

• Migration activities

• Specific retrieval requests

Suggested Operational Targets

Lifecycle

Request Access
      ↓
Approve
      ↓
Grant Access
      ↓
Complete Task
      ↓
Remove Access

Best Practices

• Establish joiner–mover–leaver operating process

• Perform monthly access cleanup

• Enable access recertification

• Track inactive licensed users

Benefit

Reduces CAL utilization and prevents license accumulation over time.

4. Prefer Shared Operational Workflows Over Individual Access

Recommendation

Where appropriate, centralize retrieval and export activities through a designated archive operations team.

Instead of:

100 Users → Vaultastic Access

Prefer:

100 Users
   ↓
Archive Operations Team
   ↓
Vaultastic Access

Benefit

• Lower CAL count

• Better governance

• Reduced administrative overhead

Access Governance Checklist

•  Identify all active CAL users

•  Remove inactive users

•  Restrict admin roles

•  Enforce temporary access approvals

•  Review access monthly

•  Disable dormant accounts

•  Align CAL count to actual archive usage

Proper access governance typically reduces both subscription costs and administrative complexity while maintaining compliance and audit readiness.