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Defrag issues

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Defrag issues - 18.Sep.2012 3:33:13 AM

yeoo_andy_ni

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Joined: 4.Feb.2009
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I have an Exchange 2003 Standard installation, and the EDB is now 240GB in size. I've exported (archived) using Exmerge to PSTs and attempted to run a defrag. It fails after 28 hours running, at about 50% (give or take, can't be exactly sure), with -1004 error OutOfBuffer which from Googling means the page file size should be increased.. The defrag also doesn't appear to be reclaiming the space back; works out to be about 140GB reclaimed, which is still more than the 75GB limit I know.

I've gone over the DB with ESEUTIL and ISINTEG to see is there anything wrong, which there doesn't appear to be, according to the scans I run. I have performed and full backup of the Exchange and left it at that.

So I wonder, how can I push the defrag through, or get the EDB back down to a more suitable size. The Exchange VM has 3GB RAM allocated to it and I think a page file up to 6GB (sitting on a separate vmdk, P drive). It's only a 32bit machine, so no point in adding more RAM. I could increase the page file size, but don't know if it will actually help.

Would it be possible, to build a "test" Exchange 2003 Enterprise server, copy (I use that term loosely) the Mailbox Store to the Enterprise server negating any limits, create a new fresh empty Mailbox Store, migrate/move the mailboxes to the "new" store and finally copy the new store back to the old server (hopefully with it being smaller in size).

I've already asked for Exchange 2010 pricing for an upgrade, or a damn good archiving solution to take the pressure off the EDB file. But I know 2010 has it's own archiving functionality, so either way works. Customer is happy to go to 2010, if the price is right. Space might be an issue as the SAN is pretty much full, but I think I can make it work with a combination of physical server/storage and SAN storage.

Sorry for the long winded post, just wanted to give as much info as possible!

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RE: Defrag issues - 18.Sep.2012 4:34:17 AM

Gulab

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Joined: 31.Jul.2008
From: India
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Did you check the event ID 1221.
I hope you know that you need 110% free space on the drive of the size of the database.

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RE: Defrag issues - 18.Sep.2012 5:36:55 AM

yeoo_andy_ni

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Joined: 4.Feb.2009
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There's 285GB free on the temp folder I've specified for the temp defrag file.
Event viewer says that only 1.6GB has been reclaimed after an online defrag.
I've done an export list of the mailboxes and totalled the size in Excel, total size for all MB's is 80GB.

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RE: Defrag issues - 18.Sep.2012 8:05:59 AM

de.blackman

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From: Toronto, Canada
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Exchange 2003 uses SIS (single instance storage) so by you exmerging to PST, you have broken single instance storage, meaning your database will balloon when you re-import the files. Upgrading to E2K10 would definitely be your best bet but another option may be to upgrade your Exchange 2003 to enterprise edition then you can split your mailboxes between multiple smaller databases.

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RE: Defrag issues - 19.Sep.2012 7:02:53 AM

yeoo_andy_ni

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Joined: 4.Feb.2009
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Yeah, I know the deal as the DB will continue to grow in size, regardless of the amount of space you're actually using.
I can't go with Enterprise as we aren't licensed for it in the production environment. I've built a test Enterprise server and have started to move the MB's to it. Will blow away the MB store on the Standard server once all have been moved, create a new one, then move them back. quickest and easiest way to reclaim the space at the moment.
I've got the go ahead for 2010, but needs to be purchased first. Might use the MSDN copy and get it going, then change the product key when complete, but need to know if they are definitely going to buy first!

(in reply to de.blackman)

Post #: 5