How to defrag Exchange 2003?

[lkrull]

Hoping someone can assist me with my issue,

Past attempts to do an offline defrag was not working and this time I managed to find out why. It’s failing due to disk space on the C: Drive.
The Defrag creates tempdfrgXXXX.edb and tempdfrgXXXX.stm files in “program files\exchsrvr\bin” folder which uses up all the disk space.

The Exchange Mailbox Store sits on the E: Drive and is over 75GB.
priv1.edb (55GB)
priv1.stm (31GB)
The C: drive only has 23GB free.

The command line I'm using is:
eseutil /d “e:\program files\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb”

This process fails because I dont have enough disk space on the C: Drive.
How can I run the defrag and let the tempdfrgXXXX.edb and tempdfrgXXXX.stm files go onto another drive that has enough disk space eg. External HDD?

 

[58sniper]

What is the need for the defrag?

eseutil does have a switch to direct the temp file to somewhere else. IIRC, it's /t.

But I haven't defragged an Exchange database in years. There rarely is a need for it.

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[strongm]

A quick question first: what are you hoping to achieve via an offline defrag?

 

[TechyMcSe2k]

How to defragment with the Eseutil utility (Eseutil.exe)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192185

And as 58sniper states, you can redirect the temp file. It shows you how in this article.

But everyone still wonders y?

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[lkrull]

Thanks for getting back to me guys.

I have a SBS 2003 with exchange and the Mailstore size is set to 75GB. It is now over the 75GB mark and the mailstore unmounts every 48 hours or so then I have to mount the store again so that our users have access to their mailboxes.

I've archived lots of users mailboxes and hoping defraging the exchange mailstore will free up space and reduce the size to under 75GB again. Or what do use suggest?

From the command I'm using, can someone show me how I should alter my command so that it creates the tempdfrg on another driver other than the C: Drive.

Thanks

 

[58sniper]

Defragging isn't going to free up space. You need to wait for the deleted item retention period to pass, as well as the deleted mailbox retention period. At that time, space recovered from your deletions will be available. Take the size of the mail store and subtract the amount mentioned in your event ID 1221 entries to get your true database size.

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[lkrull]

Another question.
Can I split the mailbox store so that I have one for Small mailbox users and Huge mailbox users.

I would like to avoid this sort of issues where the mailstore would un-mount.

 

[58sniper]

Depends on your version of Exchange. But I wouldn't split them that way. I'd split them more evenly.

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[Excalibur1701]

Just to chime in. Doing the offline defrag of a database store will make it smaller. I used to run one once a year and it always made the information store a couple of Gig smaller.

I stopped doing them once Microsoft got rid of the 32 Gig limitation.

 

[58sniper]

It only makes the FILE smaller. The amount of data stays the same. And it's the amount of data that causes the alerts and limits.

Exchange can reuse the whitespace very efficiently. In fact, it can do so more efficiently than if it had to increase the file size.

What's important is the amount of data. Since we're dealing with SBS 2003, you can only have a single database, IIRC. So you need to get people to clear out some old data. The limits placed on mailboxes should not allow the cumulative mailboxes to exceed the 75GB limit.

Some ideas include pushing out a GPO setting that empties the Deleted Items folder when users close Outlook.

Reduce the mailbox size limits.

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[lkrull]

Thank you all for your comments.

With your help here and there I managed to defrag the mailstore and dropped the size below 75GB after users cleaned out there mailboxes as well.

 

[58sniper]

Defragging didn't have any effect on that. It was the users cleaning out stuff that did it.

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[joepc]

The Exchange DB won't shrink on it's own. When you delete e-mail it only creates white space in the DB. If you filter your Exchange serves app log for event id 1221 you will see the amount of white your exchange server has.

If you do an offline defrag of your Exchange DB, you will shrnik the DB, and you will free up approximately by how much white space you have.

 

[noveyron]

Joe, have a read of 58Sniper's 7 Nov 11 18:52 post, it is an accurate desription of how it works...