Exchange 5.5 - Information Store Defrag Question 1

[SeanRinVA]

Hello,

I have an Exchange 5.5 server that has only about 3GB of space on the drive (50GB RAID) with the Private Information Store. I am needing to degrag and compact it. Adding drives is not an option.

My possible solution to this problem is to create a Windows 2000-based system and use Dynamic Disks to create a 125GB partition. I will install Exchange 5.5 onto this new machine, copy the Private Information Store to it, then run the defrag/compact on this new machine. Whent that is done, I'll copy the PIS to the old machine, allowing it to overwrite the existing one.

Anybody else done it this way, and do you think it'll work?

 

[jonarden]

You don't have to install Exchange on another machine in order to do off-line defrags when you lack drive space on the Exchange server. If you have another server on your LAN with sufficient drive space available, you can do the defrags on that server. See MS Knowledge Base articles "XADM: How to Defrag an EDB File on a Non-Exchange Server" Q163627; "XADM: How to Run Eseutil on a Computer Without Exchange Server" Q244525, and "XADM How to Defragment with the Eseutil Utility (Eseutil.exe)" Q 192185. Hope this helps!

 

[SeanRinVA]

Thank you - I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[jonarden]

You're welcome. A few more points: If your priv.edb file is large (14-15 GB) it can take 10-12 hours to copy just that file to another server and run the defrag. Also, as insurance in case something goes wrong, and if you have the drive space available on the other server, you might consider using the /p option in Eseutil.exe to retain and preserve original uncompacted .edb database(s) just in case you have to reinstall. The good news is once you have done the defrags this way, you may recover enough drive space on your Exchange server to be able to defrag on it's drive in the future.

 

[GreenTeeth]

I thoroughly agree with jonarden, if you are going to run Eseutil, make a full backup before hand that you know is restorable.

I ended up converting all emails to pst files, and renaming priv.edb so that ME created a new one and then copying them back to the server, but this is a last resort really if all else fails.

Once you have compressed your IS, it would be wise to put some sort of restriction to the size of the mailboxes to prevent this happening again, unless your boss is wonderfull and would like you to upgrade.