Exact size of an Excange 5.5 Private Information Store

[CaptainBirdseye]

Hi,
Does anyone know of a way of finding out the exact size of an Exachange 5.5 Private Information Store?

 

[rdroske]

The exact size of the store is the size of the file priv.edb in the mdbdata directory.

There may be free space within that file though. That can be determined from the Log message that gets written every night after OnLine defrag is done (Event ID 1221 Source MSExchangeIS Private). Tha amount specified in that message is the free space in priv.edb at its current size.

Priv.edb can grow to 16,651,272KB until it can't grow no more (unless Enterprise version I hear).

 

[stevedodkins]

via the information store in exchange you can also see what usage each user has via the private information store.

 

[zbnet]

Don't forget that File Explorer won't report the correct size of the priv.edb file unless you have the IS service stopped, which is definitely an out-of-hours activity unless your users are very tolerant of their email stopping responding.

 

[rdroske]

On mine it reports the same size whether stopped or started. Can't imagine why it wouldn't, size rarely changes when running.

 

[zbnet]

If your store rarely changes size when running, then it has lots of white space inside it.

Stores with very little white space do grow in file size over time, though, unless you rigourously enforce mailbox limits and don't add more mailboxes. Stores that run out of white space have their file size increased automatically on the fly, and this increased size will not be reported accurately by file explorer until the service is next stopped.

 

[rdroske]

It makes that change with a size jump that is a percentage, its not like it increases it just enough every time it gets a new message.

I'm still not convinced Explorer wouldn't see the change but it really doesn't matter.

And as the previous post stated the nightly log message from the online defrag tells you exactly how much white space is in it, unless that 0 or nearly 0, the physical size won't be changing.

 

[CrazyAlex99]

you can run an eseutil /d "database" and than it will show the real size of you DB!!

 

[zbnet]

You're living up to your name, Alex - where have you been for the last 6 months??

 

[Jutlak]

You can get the worst scenario size for your DB by opening the Mailbox resources drop-down using exchange admin, select all the mailboxes, save the contents and then open the file in excel and total the size to give you the exact space used.

 

[zbnet]

Nope, that ignores Single Instance Storage and white space. That figure equates to the exact size of the file only when a) SIS ration is 1, and b) your store has zero whitespace. Those two factors coincide onec about every ten thousand years at best - you'd be better off playing the Lotto!