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.EDB Defragmentation - Yes? No? - 30.Aug.2007 3:49:47 AM

nucleusms

Posts: 9
Joined: 30.Aug.2007
Status: offline

We are currently running Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise, on Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition.

Our First Storage Group .EDB file grew to 85GB in size and some problems started occurring. Exchange services would stop; the storage group would dismount etc.

So we created a Second Storage Group, and moved all the smaller mailboxes there, leaving all the big ones in the first one. Our problems were solved and now the exchange server is working fine.

The problem is that the .EDB file for the First Storage Group is still 85GB and the .EDB file created for the Second Storage Group is 107GB.

- Will defragmentation reduce the size of the .EDB files?

- Can we copy the .EDB files somewhere else, defragment them, and then restore them in their original positions?

- How long would it take to defragment 85GB+107GB .EDB files on a computer with 3GB RAM and a Xeon 2.8GHz processor?

- From what I read in these forums, defragmentation is not recommended. Is there any other method of reducing the size of the .EDB files, so that they would reflect the actual size of the users� mailboxes?

Thank you.

Post #: 1

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RE: .EDB Defragmentation - Yes? No? - 30.Aug.2007 6:32:30 AM

ismail.mohammed

Posts: 2392
Joined: 9.May2007
From: India
Status: offline

Offline Defragmentation:
================
It shrink the database by removing the whitespace in the database before you could go for offline defragment. First you need understand whether you require to run it or not.

When to run offline Defrag:

There are several situations where it is appropriate to run Eseutil /D to defragment an Exchange database. The following list describes some of those situations:

There is a significant amount of free space in the database that can be reclaimed and that will not be reused.
There are ESE -1018 errors affecting the indexes of a database file. In such instances, offline defragmentation rebuilds the indexes. Running an offline defragmentation effectively eliminates this corruption.
A database file has been repaired using Eseutil /P. After running repair, Eseutil offline defragmentation should be performed on the database file.
A mail storm occurs on a queue database file residing on an Exchange 2007 Hub Transport or Edge Transport server. A mail storm is a large amount of mail that fills up the transport queue faster than the transport service can process the e-mail messages. This behavior causes the queue to fill with mail, and the Queue database expands when it needs to. When the mail from the storm has been processed, and an online defragmentation has been run on the database, some amount of free space remains in the database. To reclaim this free space and shrink the database, run Eseutil /D to perform an offline database defragmentation.

You can check event 1221 in the application log which will show you the whitespace which has been acquired during online defragmentation or else you can run eseutil /ms command.

Please go through the below link
Eseutil /D Defragmentation Mode
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997972.aspx

(in reply to nucleusms)

Post #: 2