recover space

[terry712]

quick query
have a site that mail is sitting on a raid 5 set and is almost full - 30 gb left. i do have the option to slap another disk in and expand the array and diskpart the drive - (not hugely keen).

if i move some users off this box - ie move them to another store - am i correct in saying i will still be left with 30gb spare and the space freed up by moving them will be used inside the database - i dont have space to do an offline defrag

 

[58sniper]

Look at the 1221 event IDs in your application log. There should be one for each database. They'll indicate what you have for whitespace, which is space that Exchange will use before increasing the file sizes again. Short of an offline defrag, you're not going to "recover" that space for other uses, but it can be reused by Exchange.

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/

 

[Zelandakh]

How big is the disk / volume? If it is more than 90% full and you have plenty of 1221 white space then defrag (you'll need another drive to use during defrag), otherwise probably best to leave it.

 

[terry712]

dont have another disk for defrag

basically what i was ghoping to do is move some of the users - this will not free up space but will internally for exchange to re-use

then pop another server in and move users to that - remove original and use for something else

putting in symantec enterprise vault but will not be soon enough

cant really afford much downtime so new box seems safer than expanding array

assuming my assumptions are correct

 

[ShackDaddy]

Your assumptions are correct. You'd have the 30gb space on the disk and as much additional space within the .edb/.stm files as you vacated by moving some of the mailboxes to another server. You would not (should not) do an offline defrag.

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting