Exchange database not shrinking by the looks of it!

[MZiggy]

Hi, I came in at the weekend and ran a defrag on my exchange priv.edb (eseutil /d /ispriv) it took 9 hours and seemed to work okay.

The reason behind doing this was when I looked at the 'information store/mailbox resorces' screen it shows the amount of emails and size of the mailbox. There was a mail box there that I know has about 4 emails in it as I recently ran the 'clean mailbox' job and cleaned it all out. The 'information store/mailbox resorces' didn't reflect this and shows it having over 4000 emails!

I deleted 10 emails out of another mailbox and it did reflect that!

So I looked at MS KB 182903 and 192189 and decided a defrag was the best course of action.

This hasen't made any difference!

Exchange 5.5 SP4 on Windows NT Server Enterprise SP 6.0a and rolled.

Has anyone any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[phollenbeck]

do you have deleted item retention configured? If so, even though you delete, the item won't be removed until the deleted item retention time has expired and the garbage collection has taken place.

If you want to see how much space you will gain from an offline defragmentation look for event id 1221 in the application log. This will tell you how much free space is within your database.

 

[jatkinson]

Is there a way to force this deletion?

 

[Xanthras]

You have to run an offline defrag i think.

eseutil /d i think? check out the Command options on it.

 

[jatkinson]

OK

Been reading up on this and will have to run defrag on server other than exchange server as there is no room on the exchange server.

If I copy my priv.edb and then run tje eseitul on the spare server as instructed by M$ KB can I then copy the defragged priv.edb back into the exchange server and restart the email services expectin everything to be OK?!?!

 

[Sleigher]

Running a defrag doesn't change the size of the file.
"Microsoft are aware of the problem" - i.e. you already bought it so why should we fix it?

The mailboxes are defraged and size IS actually made smaller, but the file still registers the same allocation space on the disk.
Think about it like this....er...
Take a closed bottle of water about 80% full. It's 80% water and 20% air. (Your .edb file) The volume of the container is 750ml (750mb).
You shake up the bottle - that's a defragged database - all the air and bubbles are mixed.
Now leave it for a bit....this is the defrag process.
The air is separated from the water, but what you're left with is still the same volume. (Water = data, air - free space)
Xanthras is 100% correct - you have to do an offline defrag to take all the air out and make the bottle smaller to fit the volume of water

hehehe, hope that made sense!


JS

Online

 

[zoeythecat]

I think MZiggy states an offline defrag was already done. If an offline defrag did not free up space then there is no other solution other then setting limits on your mailbox and lower the database that way. And as Phollenbeck noted if you had deleted item retention enabled. However, according to MZiggy a defrag was only done for ispriv. Was this also done for the ISPUB and the DS?

 

[MarkSe]

There is a lot of incorrect information in this, an OFFLINE defrag will reclaim space.. on line maintenace (including an OLD will not!).

If I was you I would try running eseutil /g and an isinteg -s XXX -test alltests (no fix option. This will confirm if there is a problem at the JET or Store level.

I have seen a problem like this before where there was slight corruption preventing the release of data i.e. allocating the free space for collection during the offline defrag. After you have run the above go back and try the offline defrag (eseutil /d).

Mark