Exchange 2003 log files 4

[Theo2k]

Hello everyone. I have exchange 2003 and as of this morning all my primary c:\ is full due to c:\program files\exchsrv\mdbdata. Can I delete old log files to free up space? Also what is the right way to backup exchange? Any useful links or ideas?

Thanks,

Theo

 

[58sniper]

You need to perform a backup with an Exchange aware backup solution, such as NTBackup. Once it finishes successfully, the transaction logs will get truncated.

Having Exchange installed on the C: isn't recommended. You should think about moving the log directory to another drive.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[grantjb]

Also depends how granular you want to be..... you could turn on circular logging. The downside to this being you cannot replay logs when trying to recover a DB. Upside is no logs hogging your disk space if you do not have a proper backup system in place.

Grant Bradford

IT Infrastructure Analyst

HMLLP

 

[Zelandakh]

Sort the log files by date, what is the oldest? That will tell you when you last did a backup of email - what does this tell you?

 

[wahnula]

If you do decide to use NTBackup, do not simply choose the mdbdata folder...this will not be useful. Follow these instructions to properly backup the Information Store using NTBackup:

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-2003-Backup-Restore-NTBACKUP.html

Removing Exchange Logs:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/240145

Moving Logs & Databases to another drive:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821915

Exchange log drive is full:

http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Exchange-log-disk-full.html

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Theo2k]

I have sorted the log files by date and goes back to January of 2008. Each file is 5mb.

 

[zbnet]

Yup, they're the database transaction logs. Normally, they'd be valuable to you as you can use them to recover to a previous version of the database should the current one become corrupt, but as you don't seem to be backing up this server anyway, it's rather a moot point.

Just who's idea was it to run a production mailbox server with no backups, anyhow?

Follow the advice of my erstwhile colleagues above, and sort out an online backup schedule for Exchange, and move the location of the logs (get them onto a different volume to the database files).

 

[Zelandakh]

So you've not done a backup of email since January...definitely get on to those links urgently!