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eseutil - 26.Jun.2008 3:51:18 PM   
goody3335

 

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Okay, I'm pretty new and I'm a little unclear on something.  I'm running Exchange 2003.  I have 3 storage groups, so that means I have 3 different stores and 3 different transaction logs, correct? 
So, when you run eseutil to defragment, do you run it on each store?  Sorry if this is an annoying question.  Thanks for your help.
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RE: eseutil - 26.Jun.2008 4:01:13 PM   
mark@mvps.org

 

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The fact that you have three stores means you have Enterprise Edition. This means you have up to 20 stores at your disposal. Therefore you never, ever, ever, ever need to do an eseutil /d. If you bloat out a store or move lots of mailboxes or do anything that ends up leaving lots of free space in the store you should create a new store, move all the mailboxes from the affected store into the new one and then dismount and delete the EDB & STM files from the original store. Remount that store and accept the two warnings. You'll end up with a fresh store.

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RE: eseutil - 26.Jun.2008 4:06:58 PM   
goody3335

 

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Okay, I can see that.  Does the amount of items (for instance items in users folders) cause things to get defragmented?  If that is the case, then just moving the mailbox to a new store wouldn't really take care of the issue, would it?

I have a lot of users that have years of emails....alot of them are over 5000 items.

Also, just out of curiousity...when you run eseutil /d...you run that on each individual store, though, right? 

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RE: eseutil - 26.Jun.2008 4:07:28 PM   
uemurad

 

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quote:

I have 3 storage groups, so that means I have 3 different stores and 3 different transaction logs, correct?
Not necessarily.  Yes you'll have 3 different stores, but the transactional log sets are per Storage Group, not per Mailbox Store.  Therefore, you could have 1, 2, 3, or 4 sets of logs depending upon how many Storage Groups you configured (Exchange Enterprise allows you up to four Storage Groups - each of which can hold up to five Mailbox Stores).

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RE: eseutil - 26.Jun.2008 4:09:13 PM   
goody3335

 

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I see your point uemurad.  I should have been more specific, though.  I only have one mailbox store per storage group.

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RE: eseutil - 26.Jun.2008 4:16:03 PM   
mark@mvps.org

 

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I understood your point. There are some things that often don't need stating.

Anyway, if you were (and you're not) to to do a /d it is store specific. You dismount the store in question and defrag it, then remount it.

As for how it becomes fragged. All that's happened is that you've deleted lots of mailboxes and lots of messages leaving a big hole in the database. Each night Exchange does a run to take lots of little holes (from deleted mails and mailboxes) and forms one big hole. In the days of a single 16GB or 75GB store and where disks were expensive and scarce you would do a /d to reduce the physical database size. Of course, that meant a lot of user downtime and risk to the mail. Now that you have 20 stores and even Standard Exchange 2007 have five the reasons for defragging an existing store are almost nil.

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RE: eseutil - 26.Jun.2008 4:33:37 PM   
goody3335

 

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Thanks for your help, Mark!  I'm sure I'll be back with more questions...

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RE: eseutil - 26.Jun.2008 4:56:29 PM   
goody3335

 

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One more quick question.  If you create 4 new storage groups to replace 4 old storage groups, and delete the old ones...you would still have room to create 16 more storage groups...not just 12, right? 
I mean, it only counts the existing storage groups, eh?  Thanks!

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RE: eseutil - 26.Jun.2008 5:05:30 PM   
mark@mvps.org

 

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You need an Exchange book.

In 2003 you only get four storage groups but each of those can hold up to five stores. Best practice is to have one SG, put a store in it and then create a new SG. Go to the 4th SG and then go back to SG1 and put a 2nd store in it. Rinse and repeat.

Exchange 2007 Standard has five SGs with a store each (best practice). Enterprise Edition has 50. Yes, you can mix and mash with multiple stores in a single SG, but don't try.

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RE: eseutil - 2.Jul.2008 10:26:59 AM   
Docyit

 

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Mark,

Question? What does moving mailboxes to a new store due to Single instance of attachments? I feel my store will grow 20% if I do this.


I have a Mailbox store of 65GB with a stm of 17GB so 83GB total. my 1221 says i can recover 18 Gbs   although I expect to grow internally with new users and have implemented a 3rd party archiver called Sunbelt Exchange Archiver whcih replaces single instance at that point.


So do I create a new Storage group( I have enterprise) or Do  I just create a new Store in the First Storage group?
Like Mailbox store current
To
New Mailbox store


Or is it better to create a new storage group\Like
First Storage group
Mailbox Store

to Second Storage Group
Mailbox Store


Apprecite any reply...

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RE: eseutil - 2.Jul.2008 11:03:30 AM   
mark@mvps.org

 

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It will break SIS but don't get hung up on it. It certainly won't grow you by 20%.

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RE: eseutil - 2.Jul.2008 11:07:20 AM   
Docyit

 

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Okay I give that up but is it better to create Just a new store or a whole new Storage group....


Or do I just leave it alone until I migrate to the new Exchange 2007 server?

What is the best option?

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RE: eseutil - 2.Jul.2008 11:27:47 AM   
mark@mvps.org

 

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If you are migrating to 2007 then I would leave it alone. Moving twice in a relatively short period of time doesn't make much sense.

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RE: eseutil - 2.Jul.2008 11:29:44 AM   
Docyit

 

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Found this about the SIS issue
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175481/en-us

Sort of remove that as an Issue.

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RE: eseutil - 7.Jul.2008 11:45:57 PM   
consultOz

 

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I will try to answer the previous question , since I know many people will have similar question in regards to design

Question? What does moving mailboxes to a new store due to Single instance of attachments? I feel my store will grow 20% if I do this.
----yes breaking the DB into smaller DB will cause SIS to break, but remember having 65GIG one huge mail DB is not efficient for the exchange server, in my opinion.
Exchange utilizes what Microsoft terms a single-instance message store. This single-instance message store works on a per database basis. 
If you break 65GIG into 15 GIG 4 databases ( last one is 18 gig)  it will be much easier for exchange to deal with these smaller databases versus one big database, your performance will increase and backup will be happier.
What is this SIS? It is shared message storage if you would think so, Exchange stores copy of message and creates pointer to multiple mailboxes within the same mail store. If a message is sent to one recipient, and if the message is copied to 20 other recipients who reside in the same mailbox store, Exchange Server maintains only one copy of the message in its database. Exchange Server then creates pointers
If a message is sent to one recipient, and if the message is copied to 20 other recipients who reside in the same mailbox store, Exchange Server maintains only one copy of the message in its database. Exchange Server then creates pointers.

These pointers link both the original recipient and the 20 additional recipients to the original message. If the original recipient and the 20 additional recipients are moved to another mailbox store, only one copy of the message is maintained in the new mailbox store.

The new mailbox store can be on another server in the same site or in an administrative group. If the server is in another site, single-instance storage is retained only if you use the Move Mailbox Wizard in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) or later versions.

The Exchange Server 2003 SP1 Move Mailbox wizard introduced a new Cross Administrative Group Move feature that lets you move mailboxes across administrative groups.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175481
I have a Mailbox store of 65GB with a stm of 17GB so 83GB total. my 1221 says i can recover 18 Gbs   although I expect to grow internally with new users and have implemented a 3rd party archiver called Sunbelt Exchange Archiver whcih replaces single instance at that point.
----65 Gig database is too big, you have exchange enterprise version you should not let your mail DB to grow this big, this is telling me, there is poor planning in the design of your exchange environment
The simple rule is the smaller the database, the happier the Exchange will be (your backup, performance as well)
I would implement the design as below, and distribute the mail boxes equally ( you want to keep a mail store empty, couple so that you will never ever have to so ESEUTIL, again simply as Mark suggested move the mailboxes around in the night and delete the ones getting polluted with white space)

SG1
SG1-MB1
SG1-MB2
SG1-MB3
SG1-MB4
PF1
SG2
SG2-MB1
SG2-MB2
SG2-MB3
SG2-MB4
SG2-MB5 (empty,  use for maintenance)
SG3
SG3-MB1
SG3-MB2
SG3-MB3
SG3-MB4
SG3-MB5 (empty,  use for maintenance)

SG4
SG4-MB1
SG4-MB2
SG4-MB3
SG4-MB4
SG4-MB5 (empty,  use for maintenance)

 
--The problem with any archiving software is that, when you run the third party utility, it will go to exchange and index all the mail you specified within the time range and leave some short cut in the user mailbox. The idea is great the user won’t even understand where the mail is, they will click on the shortcut icon and that time mail data (most likely is going to be sitting on some type of SAN, environment will come back to exchange mail store, so that the user can see it. When you index 63 gig mail data, the size of the database won’t change; you will end up having WHITE SPACE, therefore you will have to keep some empty mail stores to move user mailboxes and delete the one with white space, don’t even bother with ESEUTIL, waste of time.

So do I create a new Storage group( I have enterprise) or Do  I just create a new Store in the First Storage group?  Like Mailbox store current  To  New Mailbox store  Or is it better to create a new storage group\Like  First Storage group  Mailbox Store  to Second Storage Group  Mailbox Store
--I have already answered this question
--oz


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RE: eseutil - 8.Jul.2008 7:15:19 AM   
Docyit

 

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Thanks for the great explaination Oz.

I ended up along those lines and from what you said will break out another diviision as soon as I can determine  a group to split. as the SIS is now align functionally.


As a result of moving, for those wondering the impact, I began moving over 290 mailboxes from the default mailbox store to two new stores within the same storage group.

Since I have a branch leaving on their own soon it was easy to determine who to split off.

I started with a comnbined 83 GB
After moving, which took 20 hrs, I ended up with one store with 6 GB's and the second main store now with only 42 GB's, a 43% savings.


I did see a few permission problems from older accounts but was able to add the needed permissions and move successfully. The Sunbelt Exchange Archiver had no problem throughout and has help reduce my store in size initially providing much of the 18GB's of reported white space prior to the move.

So all in all a great exerise and result.

Now according to Oz I need to split the existing 42GB in half and keep the oringinal Priv.mdb ( now empty) for maintenance.

Thanks for all the support and guidence. Hope this helps others too.

Doc


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