Mailstore size 170Gb

[jny04]

Hi guys, i hope you can help me with this one.

we have a client who migrated all there Groupwise Mail from 5 Sites, to one exchange 2k3 SP1 box, resulting in a mailstore of 170Gb.

What are you recommendations for getting this down, or moving forward......

due to company compliance (Architects) they have to keep all mail, they are basically using the mail system as a document management system

I thought about offline defrag???

 

[ntinlin]

Offline defrag will do nothing unless you actually have white space. Check for event id 1221 in logs to see if you have any. Doubtful though unless you actually purge some of the mail.

I would suggest some sort of 3rd party archiving system would be a good idea for you, basically it would export messages to a vault leaving a stub for access. Would mean less data to backup every night, on the XC side at least.

Also if you have only one mailbox store with 170Gb in it you should also think about splitting that up into multiple storage groups and stores to make restores quicker if necessary. It can also make backups quicker depending on the backup software. You obviously have Enterprise version with that size of mailstore so you can have up to 20 mailbox stores spread across 4 storage groups.

Neill

 

[jny04]

White Space? Do you mean providing more disk space for this?

we have over 1 TB free to do this? how long would it take?

we have a document archiver/management in mind, however we would like to defrag this store first

also would sp2 do any good?

 

[Spirit]

Ok, you've migrated and have a large mailstore. BUT the increase if any will be caused by loss of single instance storage.

Why are you determined to run a defrag?

White space is say you have 200gb mailstore 50gb is permanently deleted but the store remains at 200gb rather than 150gb. Because exchange has that space and is quite happy with it thank you very much! That way it has 50gb of growth before requiring more.

Have a read of:

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/tips/defragmentation.asp

I have NEVER run an offline defrag to regain white space in 7 years of using Exchange. In Exch2003 I run an online everynight.

If your determined to run a defrag:
Run your archive first THEN defrag otherwise your going to defrag now to regain space and then need to do it again to regain the white space created by the mass archiving.

Iain

 

[Zelandakh]

With 170GB I'd say you need 4 storage groups each with a store in them.

Move a department to the second storage group. Then another related department until you have a store of 30GB-50GB.
Repeat for the third storage group.
Repeat for the fourth storage group.

Take a backup.
Take another backup.
Offline defrag the first store if you really must.

Check your IOPS to ensure you have enough spindles.

 

[PScottC]

I agree with Zelandakh. I would go one step further and suggest using multiple storage groups to break up the log file usage. I try to keep DB size below 30GB to allow easy restore and maintenance.

PSC

Governments and corporations need people like you and me. We are samurai. The keyboard cowboys. And all those other people out there who have no idea what's going on are the cattle. Mooo! --Mr. The Plague, from the movie "Hackers

 

[58sniper]

I'll go further and say, if possible, put the stores on separate arrays.

Spirit mentioned the loss of SIS, but there wasn't any to lose. They migrated from GroupWise.

I'd recommend looking into something like GFI's MailArchiver.

http://www.gfi.com/mailarchiver/

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[jny04]

Ok so what is the advantages of splitting inot storage groups?
how long would a defrag take, can you do it by storage group than the whole mailstore?

 

[58sniper]

Disaster recovery; the ability to put some mailboxes on different arrays; advanced administration (you can set limits and other parameters at the store level).

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt