Shrinking Exchange 2003 Database

[Marvintpa]

So has anyone ever managed to do this?

 

We have treid all sorts of things but the datbase remains at 15Gb Minimum!

 

We have almost all of the users data out using Exmerge. Defregmented the database offline using eseutils.

 

But the database steadfastly refuses to shrink.....

 

 

Any clues would be helpful.

 

 

 

TIA

 

Marvin

[Geoff]

Did you do an online or offline defrag? Because an online defrag doesn't reduce the size of the database.. Have a read of this article:

 

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-ISINTEG-ESEUTIL.html

[m2d2]

So has anyone ever managed to do this?

 

We have treid all sorts of things but the datbase remains at 15Gb Minimum!

 

 

Any clues would be helpful.

 

TIA

 

Marvin

 

 

Journalling perhaps. If the journal mb is still active then because of single instance storage then the database will not shrink even if you appear to have 'cleared' the other accounts.

[FreeWill]

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

We tried an offline defrag using eseutil; after dismounting the public and private folders.

 

m2d2 - where is the Journal Mailbox located? It doesn't appear that we have one - it is not located under the 'Mailboxes' folder in ESM.

[srochford]

Why do you want to shrink the database?

[zag]

If your problem is the 15gb limit of exchange standard SP1 there is a registry fix to enable larger sizes.

 

Or just install Exchange 2003 SP2 so you can go up to 75gb no problem.

 

If you have simply run out of space on your server then you got problems

[m2d2]

m2d2 - where is the Journal Mailbox located? It doesn't appear that we have one - it is not located under the 'Mailboxes' folder in ESM.

 

You may not have it setup as it would stand out if it were there.

 

How about public folders? How big are pub.edb and pub.stm?

[FreeWill]

We wanted to shrink the database because after clearing out all student mailboxes there was no way the database should have been 14GB.

 

Since yesterday we (well - Marvintpa) have found the correct flag to use with eseutil which re-created the database minus the rubbish.

 

For reference we used eseutil /d [mailtstore path] /p /t [drive&new database filename].

 

We removed the old database and replaced it with the smaller one.

 

The database is now 1.5GB, fully working without the rubbish

[Marvintpa]

Why do you want to shrink the database?

 

We dont want to shrink it ... we needed to shrink it

 

The server that holds our Exchange mail service has a limited disk capacity .. and we are once again without funds to upgrade it.

 

After the departure of the students I decided to be a :twisted: facist :twisted: and delete all the mailboxes from the then) 10Gb Mailstore.

Once I had done that and replaced the mailboxes for the essential staff (me, Freewill and a couple of lesser beings ) the mailstore had filled the partitiion.

 

Anyway

All is now fixed ..... the Mailstore is now back with all our (mine and Freewill) all Lesser Beings (Teachers and support staff) and no students

and is only 5Gb.

[m25man]

As long as the disk holding the databases has at least as much free space as the live database the built in maintenance will keep things in check.

Deleted mail and mailboxes will be retained until the retention policy is enforced and the old stuff is purged.

 

Once free drive space has fallen to less than the database size you are in trouble, maintenance such as compressing and deleting whitespace can no longer take place and very quickly the database grows to it's maximum size and stays there until the store dismounts.

 

If your database was 15Gb then you would need at least 15Gb of freespace.

Deleted mail or mailboxes will not free up space until the retention period passes.

A full online backup is needed to purge the logs.

Remember SP2 does not increase the database size by itself, you still need to make a registry change.

Increasing your database size will also increase your backup window requirement, a 75 GB Exchange store will need 75GB of free space and a backup window of about 2 days (hardly efficient).

 

My best Exchange Tips are,

Use the Enterprise version, have several storage groups that can be stored on different drives, back up each one individually.

 

If you run out of disk space on your log drive and your store dismounts try using the built in NTFS File compression tool to squish the log files then do an online backup to purge them.

 

If you plan on upgrading from standard to enterprise make sure you apply SP1 then SP2 and all hotfixes as you can break your IIS and OWA very easily.

[Grommit]

As long as the disk holding the databases has at least

 

If you run out of disk space on your log drive and your store dismounts try using the built in NTFS File compression tool to squish the log files then do an online backup to purge them.

 

Can you not just delete the log files ?

[srochford]

Why do you want to shrink the database?

 

We dont want to shrink it ... we needed to shrink it

 

The server that holds our Exchange mail service has a limited disk capacity .. and we are once again without funds to upgrade it.

 

After the departure of the students I decided to be a :twisted: facist :twisted: and delete all the mailboxes from the then) 10Gb Mailstore.

Once I had done that and replaced the mailboxes for the essential staff (me, Freewill and a couple of lesser beings ) the mailstore had filled the partitiion.

 

Anyway

All is now fixed ..... the Mailstore is now back with all our (mine and Freewill) all Lesser Beings (Teachers and support staff) and no students

and is only 5Gb.

 

that makes sense! You don't gain anything in terms of more space in the mailbox store by shrinking it (ie a 15Gb file can have 15Gb of free space for mail but it does take up disc space)

 

Is there anything else on the server which could move? Something which doesn't need fast disc and could go somewhere else (external USB drives are cheap)

[srochford]

As long as the disk holding the databases has at least

 

If you run out of disk space on your log drive and your store dismounts try using the built in NTFS File compression tool to squish the log files then do an online backup to purge them.

 

Can you not just delete the log files ?

 

You really don't want to do that - if ever you need to restore, you won't be able to do it without the log files. They will be deleted automatically when a backup completes successfully; log files dated older than your last backup tell you that your last backup failed (eg we backup the exchange stores at 2200 each night; any .log file older than that is a quick indication that something went wrong with the backup)