Another question on the Priv.edb 1

[Maritime]

Hi,
I'm running Exchange 5.5 and recently my Priv.edb just seemed to grow out of control. In fact it got so large that it used up most of my disk space. Seeing that I had virtually no disk space left, I could not run Eseutil and most of my research said it was something that should only be run as a last resort. Anyway I ended up increasing my disk space, now after all that history, my question is how do I prevent my priv.edb from again on it's own increasing in size? Most of my users all use .pst files so I'm surpized that the database grew so much in the fist place. Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[trent1980]

what kind of growth are we talking about? how many users and how big is your priv.edb

 

[Maritime]

I have about 135 users. Between 2-5 users store mail on the Server, eveyone one else uses .pst files on their PC. The priv.edb grew to 4GB. I know that's not the size I started out at. Any ideas.

 

[trent1980]

http://www.ntfaq.ch/MS Exchange Disaster Recovery Part 2.htm

read the section on defragmentation and compaction. i can't tell you why it grew but if it helps at all, i would give anything to have a 4gb priv.edb - ours is at 26gb and crashed friday night. We're looking at about an 8 hour defrag with a company who doesn't accept any "downtime" but won't pay to have a good solution. at least with a 4gb priv.edb, you can defrag it in an hour. it is possible that your database has a large percentage of white space, but that article will walk you through everything needed.

 

[Maritime]

Thanks a lot. I do believe the statment about the white space. I could not defrag before as I had only about 210MB of disk left. Well good luck on your side. Are you going to be running the Eseutil utility?

I'll check out the article. Thanks again for the help.

 

[rdroske]

Go to Servers/Maibox resources to check the size of each mailbox. That should tell you why it grew. If you have no message size restrictions someone could be using mail to transfer large files etc.

4 Gig isn't so bad, mine unfortunately hovers nearer the absolute limit of 16.

Compacting it won't help at all unless you delete something.

If you do need to do it though you can specify a network share on another machine as the location for the temp file during defrag (slower though).

Also helpful is the nightly message in your application log stating size available after online defrag. This figure refers only to the space that is available in the file at its current size however, not total.

How did you ever get to 26Gig Trent? As far as I know 16 is absolute limit for edb file? Do you have enterprise version (although e there I understood that any one edb could only be 16 Gig but multiple edbs could be used?) Or was that a typo?


Anyone else know anything about how more than 16 Gig can be achieved?

 

[trent1980]

we upgraded at 16gb to enterprise and have not stopped growing -- give me your email address and i'll send you some screen shots

 

[rdroske]

Thanks Trent1980,

It's not that I don't beleive you but I would like to see the screen shots. Might help me convince the man with the money to pay for the upgrade to Enterprise.

You wouldn't happen to know what you paid? I looked into it long ago and if I remember it was pretty pricey and the rep we talked to definitely gave the impression that the 16 GB limit was still there but that the same server could handle multiple edb's.

I'm rdroske@frontrunnernetworks.com