Exchange 5.5 is about to crash...HELP 1

[werds]

I have recently taken over as IT Administrator For a medium sized company. To my horror I found out that the hard disk is running out of space and fast. I managed to free a little space by altering the virtual memory, but we only have 100Mb left. I have tried to delete old documents from the public folders in outlook to free up another 200Mb. But when deleted, the freespace got smaller. I found out this was due to the deleted items retention time which was set to five days as default. I changed this to 0 days and still I have no joy. Can anyone please give me any ideas on how I can free up some more space.
Thanks Andrew

 

[Zelandakh]

You need to do an offline defrag.

 

[werds]

How do I do an offline defrag.

 

[ShackDaddy]

See thread thread10-164393 and thread10-164338 for details and some things to watch out for.

When you get done reading those threads, little should be left to the imagination, except, perhaps, that you need to use a utility called eseutil. See Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q128325 for details on how to use it.

ShackDaddy

 

[werds]

Thanks for all the information you have given me from the other threads, I will let you know how I get on.

 

[Zelandakh]

werds,

Make notes on what you do and in what order, any problems you run into (drop a note in here so we can help) and then make it into an FAQ for the next person.

 

[smugg]

Most likely, your offline defrag will fail. Defrag requires a great deal of space, which you don't have. Consider bringing up a new Exchange server in the same domain. It took a me few days to do but reduced down-time drastically since you always have one Exchange server working. Microsoft's Technet site,

http://www.microsoft.com/technet,

has all of the documentation you need to make a smooth transition.

 

[GWINTO]

I have recently encountered somthing similar myself, in the folders where you have exchange installed take a look in the following
IMCDATA > IN > ARCHIVE
IMCDATA > OUT > ARCHIVE

If these are full of log files you can delete them (or perhaps move them to tape).

You will then need to turn down (or off) logging in the IMC.

This released over 3Gb for me. If these folders are empty then sorry I can't help

 

[werds]

I have been told I need to enable circular logging to get rid of all the EDB files, the files are edb00148 to edb006ef. So as you can see there are a lot of 5Mb files.

I know where to enable circular logging, but can you tell what I need to do before I enable it and the consequences of enabling ciccular logging.

Currently all of exchange is backed up every night but I am not sure if the backup is exchange server aware.How do I check this?

Could you please let me know everything I need to do if I enable circular logging.

Thanks for all your help, and all the usefull threads and microsoft sites you have given me.

 

[werds]

Also what are the consequences of deleting all of the edb00148 to edb006ef files.

 

[Guest_imported]

The edbxxxxx.log files mean you can recover your Information store up to the minute it failed (as these files log all changes to the Information store database).

Without these log files(ie circular logging enabled) you can only recover the information store to the time of your last backup, as the edb log files cycle and are overwritten.

If your backup program is Exchange aware is should be removing the old edbxxxx.log files (and backing them up to tape) when the online backup is run. Check your backup software vendors web site for more information.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Thanks, Guest165, but that's not quite right. Standard logging is supposed to keep logs since the last good backup, and clear out all the logs when a good backup completes. Circular logging is different, and doesn't offer the same protection. It saves space, but if you hadn't backed up for two months, it is highly likely that your 'circular logs' wouldn't hold the data in them to be able to restore from your last backup and then apply the logs to get current. Only standard logging guarantees that the logs, combined with your last backup, should bring you to up-to-the-minute recovery.

So werds, once you have done an off-line defrag, perhaps using the -t switch to do the defrag on another server with more space, make sure that you are NOT using circular logging, and that your backup software is configured to backup the information store through the Exchange backup API, not by merely copying the database file. Different backup programs handle this differently. I'm using Backup Exec 7.3, and it's pretty easy to see what the difference between those two things is.

Was this helpful? You know what to do.

ShackDaddy

 

[werds]

just to let everyone know,all I did was enable circular logging on the information store. I did a full backup previous to that and stored all the edbxxxxx.log files onto a tape. After circular loggon was enabled it deleted all of the log files, and I now have 7Gb of free space and everything is running smoothly, I do a backup of exchange every night of which we will be able to recover from that.
I am currently using veritus backup exec v4.5, how can I tell if the backup is exchange server aware. I think that it is because everytime a backup is done the old edbxxxxx.log files are deleted and new ones created following the previous logs.

 

[ShackDaddy]

Sounds like you are set.

 

[werds]

thanks for all your help, you pointed me in the right direction, and what to read up on.
Werdna...