Post Exchange 2013 Migration Hard Disk Space

[chrisjako]

After migrating all accounts from exchange 2013 to O365 I was expecting hard drive storage on my on-premises server to go down

 

Does anyone know if it will start deleting after the 30 day retention policy or will the data stay on there permanently?

 

I am wanting to stick our on premises server to a virtual server but not at the 3TB its currently at

[Domino]

The data will be removed after the retention expires, but the space in the DBs will be retained as white space, the DB files will not reduce in size.

 

If you've data to keep on site I'd suggest making a new DB (or several) and moving and mailboxes to it- it'll then only be the size of space needed.

[3s-gtech]

From my research, once your Exchange mail storage (not logs etc) goes up, it never comes down. It simply stops growing if you remove things from it (like mailboxes, mail etc). It makes managing the space a real challenge! Edited November 22, 2017 by 3s-gtech
SPG

[chrisjako]

The data will be removed after the retention expires, but the space in the DBs will be retained as white space, the DB files will not reduce in size.

 

If you've data to keep on site I'd suggest making a new DB (or several) and moving and mailboxes to it- it'll then only be the size of space needed.

 

 

In terms of mailbox and shared groups no we have nothing left on site its all been migrated over, so I should just be able to delete the databases from EAC? since nothing uses them anymore

[Domino]

I'd build a new one as a "just-in case" - even with everything moved over it can be handy to have certain things on site. And yeah, remove the others, it'll freak if there's remaining dependencies, which can point to things you've yet to remove/repoint.

[chrisjako]

From my research, once you Exchange mail storage (not logs etc) goes up, it never comes down. It simply stops growing if you remove things from it (like mailboxes, mail etc). It makes managing the space a real challenge!

 

took us almost 3 days to restore a backup due to an issue with the log files, hence sparked the need to move over to office365 - I know there are ways to purge the logs but that job sometimes gets overlooked

Edited November 22, 2017 by chrisjako

[CraigM]

Not sure if you can still defrag the database in 2013, but the defrag will essentially create a new DB and copy everything left from the old DB over in an orderly fashion which will also be much more compacted than the original. Will take a while though, especially on huge databases. I used to do the defrag on Exchange 2007 twice a year to keep things orderly.