General Housekeeping on Exchange 2003

[skk391]

Hello,
I have Exchange 2003 with around 40 users, I have a confession that I am going to admit to. I setup the Exchange Server over a year ago and really haven’t touched it since then ( I know I know). We don’t send/receive that many emails the priv1.edb file is around 7.5gb in size.

My question is does anyone have an advice on what I should do for maintenance?
I carry out a windows backup every night which includes system state. Is this all that I need? I have read a little about defrag, pst files etc. I will admit I don’t know much about Exchange nor do I even like working with it, but I do know if I don’t carry out some maintenance / general housekeeping then it will all crash and burn one day.
I don’t want a step by step guide on what to do, but if someone can provide me with a list of general housekeeping which needs to be done I will do some research.
Is the Windows Backup all that I need to restore the server in case of failure?
I’m not too concerned about mailbox sizes etc, but I have plenty of free space on the server and disks or so inexpensive these days, but I would like to save all sent and received email for the end users.
I have a few users who have left is there any way that I can store away these mailboxes and then disabled the accounts?
I have a journal account were all sent and received email to copied to, I regularly archive this account and have a few .pst files on the network, is this all I need to be able to restore this mailbox with all of the email that have been sent /received by the Exchange Server?

Many Thanks

 

[58sniper]

Install all relevant Windows and Exchange updates, including hotfixes, patches, and service packs.

.pst files are not supported on network shares. Whenever possible, avoid using .pst files.

Verify your backups are valid.

Check your event logs.

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/

 

[smoss51]

Windows backup is not enough - you also need to be doing Exchange aware backups. NTBackup can handle that.

Use exmerge to export the mailboxes of users who are gone to PST files, then you can safely remove the account and mailboxes. Run the Exchange cleanup agent after removing old accounts to mark the mailbox for removal.

Monitor events (worth repeating).

If you aren't running an AV application, consider it.

 

[58sniper]

You don't need to run the cleanup agent unless you want to purge them right away. It'll do that automatically if you let it.

Monitor everything. Event logs, IIS logs, message tracking logs....

Apply Security Configuration Wizard policies, run ExBPA, MBSA,......

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/

 

[skk391]

Cheers, Sounds like good advise, just going to go some research & put into practice. Thanks