Exchange 5.5 online defragment

[komara69]

Can anyone help me. when I view the event viewer i used to see the Exchange Online defragment now I no longer see that and I think my Exchange database full of defrag files since it have not been defrag regularly for the past 15 months or so. Is there anyway that I can check when was the last time the database has been defrag? second, how can i turn on the online defragement? You help would be very appreciate.

komara

 

[fuego007]

In Exchange Admin, select your server and open the properties page. Select the IS maintenance tab. If the 'Always' option is selected, the system is running the process every 15 minutes (this can affect system performance). If the 'Selected Times' option is selected, check to see if all the blocks are white. If this is the case, no defragmentation is being performed. I recommend you block out the period of 5:00 - 7:00 AM for every day of the week (click in the top block to the left of the 6:00 line and drag the mouse pointer to the right one block, then down to the bottom). You should have two columns of blue blocks.

Good luck.

 

[komara69]

I check the IS maintenance tab and it does have 1 blue block. is this mean anything. Also, I try to install second NIC so I can do a network load balance because I see the STORE.EXE running very high and it's recommand that I install a second NIC. If i install second NIC would it crash the exchange? What is your recomandation to resolve the problem? Alot of my users complaint that it getting slower and slower each day to get the eamil.

 

[fuego007]

You need to analyze the load on your server along with the server's capabilities and configuration.

How many mailboxes do you have? What is the speed of your network, and how is your NIC configured? If you have a 100Mbps network but your NIC and/or switch are configured incorrectly, your users will suffer. Your NIC and switch ports should be manually configured for 100Mbps/full duplex, and your client workstations should be as well. A mismatch will have a serious effect on overall performance.

If your server has insufficient RAM, performance will suffer as the IS grows. One of the least expensive performance enhancements you can make is to put as much RAM in your Exchange server as it can handle. If you simply have too many mailboxes for the hardware you are using to handle efficiently, consider adding a server to your Exchange site and moving some of the mailboxes to it. This would be more effective than adapter teaming (more accurate term than load balancing in this instance) if the processor simply can't handle the load. If your system is simply too slow, improving network throughput will not result in any improvement in performance.

More simply put, you need to do a little analysis to determine where your bottleneck is - the server itself, the network, or just a configuration issue.

In your latest posting, you say that the store.exe is running high. Do you mean that it is using a lot of processor time, or that it is using a lot of memory. It is normal for store.exe to consume a great deal of memory, but it should not consume a great deal of processor time.

As for the maintenance issue, if you have only one single blue square, that would indicate that there is only one hour (or 15 minutes, depending on the selection on the right-hand side of the tab) scheduled for IS defragmentation each week. Make the change I suggested in my first post (making sure the window is set to display the time in one-hour increments). Since it has been a long time since the IS has been properly defragmented, I would increase the amount of time to at least 4 hours per day. After a week, or so, check the event log to see how much fragementation is being reported. I can't remember the event ID you need to look for, but you shouldn't have any trouble finding it.

If you want to perform a manual defrag, schedule it for after-hours. Make sure you have free space on the partition containing the IS that is equal to 1.1 time the size of the priv.edb (if the priv.edb is 4GB, you will need 4.4GB of free space). Perform a tape backup before proceeding. Stop the Directory Service (this will cause the IS and MTA to stop). Open a command (DOS) window, and enter: eseutil /d /ispriv.

I recommend you let the online process run for a few days before deciding if a manual defrag is necessary. You won't see a decrease in the size of the database files, as the online process does not recover free space. You should start to see an improvement in performance after a few days, though. How long it takes to see improvement will depend on how large the database is, and how much fragmentation there is. Be patient. Letting the automatic processes work is always preferred to manual intervention.

 

[komara69]

Thank for your respond.

I have 153 mailbox,the server is PII 333 with 853MB RAM and 35GB free space where priv.edb, pub.edb, and dir.edb located. The NIC is compaq10/100 UTP PCI network adapter I configure for 100Mbps/full duplex and the Cisco 3500 Catalyst I configured for 100Mbps/full duplex. Keep in mind that I have no problem since I implememt this server 2 years ago. The problem just happened about 3 months now and I dont know where to do Troubleshoot. What is your suggestion. Your respond is very helpful to me thank you.