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Move LARGE mailbox problem

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Move LARGE mailbox problem - 4.Dec.2008 4:30:31 PM

Tim Boothby

Posts: 2
Joined: 4.Dec.2008
Status: offline

Hi All,

I'm trying to move my journaling mailbox from the main infomation store into a dedicated Database in a dedicated Storage Group. The mailbox store has become so large that I'm having difficulty backing it up, so I'm trying to split up the storage.

The journaling mailbox is 900k items and 40GB in size. It's an Exchange 2007 server with all roles on one machine, all storage groups are on the same RAID5 array.

I set up the new database to hold the journaling mailbox through the management console, then used the move mailbox wizard. This ran for 3 days, completing earlier this afternoon saying the move was successful. But.... since the move completed no emails are being delivered, they are backing up in a MapiDelivery queue. The RAID array holding the mailbox stores is showing 100% activity and the transaction log drive is slowly filling up. It's been in this state for about 6 hours so far.

I assume that having moved the mailbox it's running some kind of process on the source storage group to delete the old emails or something? I'm assuming that left alone for long enough it will all start working again. But if it's not sorted itself out in 10 hours time when people turn up to work, I'm going to have 50 very angry users complaining that they need their email.

So, does anybody have any suggestions as to what Exchange is doing, how long it's going to take, and is there anything I can do to force it to start delivering mail again?

Thanks,

Tim

Post #: 1

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RE: Move LARGE mailbox problem - 4.Dec.2008 4:45:47 PM

mark@mvps.org

Posts: 6811
Joined: 9.Jun.2004
From: Philadelphia PA
Status: offline

Exchange is not an archiving product, what you're doing is just plain wrong and you really, really need to stop or at the very least re-think it.
You're never going to move that mailbox with no problem so your only sensible option would be to start a fresh with a new journaling mailbox. Use exmerge on the old mailbox to export out lots of PST files in date or subject or sender ranges (whatever works for you). And then don't let this happen again. Create new mailboxes each month (say) and change the journaling target regularly so that the mailboxes concerned don't get full.

Remember, as it stands your journaling mailbox is literally useless. You can't get into it without bringing the server to its knees. You can't render folders or views without killing the server.

_____________________________

Mark Arnold (Exchange MVP)
List Moderator

(in reply to Tim Boothby)

Post #: 2

RE: Move LARGE mailbox problem - 4.Dec.2008 4:54:36 PM

Tim Boothby

Posts: 2
Joined: 4.Dec.2008
Status: offline

Ok thanks. I'll look at getting rid of the large journaling mailbox altogether. But that doesn't solve my immidate problem. The move mailbox wizzard said the move completed ok, but clearly something is still happening and mail isn't getting through to users mailboxes.

Do I just sit and wait with my fingers crossed, or is there something more positive I can do?

(in reply to mark@mvps.org)

Post #: 3

RE: Move LARGE mailbox problem - 4.Dec.2008 5:06:17 PM

mark@mvps.org

Posts: 6811
Joined: 9.Jun.2004
From: Philadelphia PA
Status: offline

You should try and kick a backup off to clear the logs. If things are working ok in the background the backup will work, logs will be purged and all will be well. Sure, you're going to be hammering the server for a long time but frankly you're going to have to take the earache the users will give you because you did something you shouldn't have done. Been there, done that etc. etc.

If things are all awry you might want to reboot the destination. Leave the source alone though, for now anyway.

_____________________________

Mark Arnold (Exchange MVP)
List Moderator

(in reply to Tim Boothby)

Post #: 4