Got another Question for you folks in the know

Got a server here running Exchange2003 (presume its enterprise edition as the mailstore is currently 33gig)

Dont blame me for this, i didnt design the server

Its a dual P4Xeon 3gig with 1gb of ram, and 3x146gb discs, in raid 5 and 2 partitions (os and data)

The company are *considering* migrating all users to exchange.. but i think thats in the distant future, but we are migrating all key staff to exchange in the next couple of months..

We currently have 84 exchange users.. which will rise, but ive no idea how the current box will cope.. so any pointers would be greatfully recived.

Also.. defragmenting lol, i know exchange has its own db defragmentation procedures, but on the actual disc defragmentation, its just one big red bar (with well over 1500 fragments) lol... can i use the usual server 2003 disk defrag on the drive with the mailstore on? does it need the mailstore taken offline first?

sorry to be a nusiance, this has been dumped on me, and i will *eventually* be getting my work to pay for a msce

Colin

We have 400 users on our exchange 5.5 box running the standard edition with no problem, you may need more ram as ours has 2GB.

Thats one big datastore for so few users, our database is currently 12GB for all those users.

To defrag, dismount the datastore and drop to a command prompt, then type

cd c:\program files\exchsrvr\bin

cd path to database file eg d:\data

c:eseutil /d databasename eg. priv.edb

that should get a few GB back.

Colin

We have 400 users on our exchange 5.5 box running the standard edition with no problem' date=' you may need more ram as ours has 2GB.

Thats one big datastore for so few users, our database is currently 12GB for all those users.

To defrag, dismount the datastore and drop to a command prompt, then type

cd c:\program files\exchsrvr\bin

cd path to database file eg d:\data

c:eseutil /d databasename eg. priv.edb

that should get a few GB back.[/quote']

Yep.. but most of our users are *****... lol probably around 10 whose mailboxes are over 2gb... one is 3.5gig.

what (if any) kind of rules do you enforce regarding archiving/size restrictions?

I generally go by the rule of 50 users = 1GB RAM - and multiply upwards

Yup defrag the database, you'll probably need it. We here are currently using a 2TB cluster of hard disks - I hope its enough!

Is circular logging enabled? I was hitting panic mode when our server was down to 30Mb (yes, megabytes!) of free space and I didn't know why. Then I discovered that the pillock who had set up Exchange Server 3 years ago hadn't set up circular logging, with the result that the server was filling up with dozens of 5Mb log files.

I enabled circular logging - hey presto an extra 3 Gb of space. Which is a lot when it's only a 9.2Gb drive.

Is circular logging enabled? I was hitting panic mode when our server was down to 30Mb (yes' date=' megabytes!) of free space and I didn't know why. Then I discovered that the pillock who had set up Exchange Server 3 years ago hadn't set up circular logging, with the result that the server was filling up with dozens of 5Mb log files.

I enabled circular logging - hey presto an extra 3 Gb of space. Which is a lot when it's only a 9.2Gb drive.[/quote']

If you were doing backups then the old log files should have been flushed.

Circular logging has the potential to screw you over rather badly if you need to rebuild a failed server.

As for the topic of this thread , just chuck some more memory in it and it'll be fine.

If you were doing backups then the old log files should have been flushed.

Circular logging has the potential to screw you over rather badly if you need to rebuild a failed server.

As for the topic of this thread ' date=' just chuck some more memory in it and it'll be fine.[/quote']

What about defragmenting?.. can i use disk defrag? do i need to put the store offline, or does this not matter in the big exchange scheme of things?

this is how f00ked it is lol

If you were doing backups then the old log files should have been flushed.

Circular logging has the potential to screw you over rather badly if you need to rebuild a failed server.

As for the topic of this thread ' date=' just chuck some more memory in it and it'll be fine.[/quote']

Backup daily..............I suspect that our "expert" didn't have a clue about ES - he also managed to leave us with an open mail relay :eek: :eek: That made us popular

Your hard drive looks like it would benefit from a defrag (this can be done with the store online) but also the actual message store itself can be defragmented.

The message store grows as required , but if a load of emails are deleted then the message store itself stays the same size. It automatically runs an online defrag which moves the data to the start of the file and the space to the end but thats all. An offline defrag will remove the empty space entirely.

Before you start to add new users it's worth doing this one weekend when you can take it offline. How many message stores do you have at the mo? It's worth using multiple ones to keep the file sizes down and so you can take just a portion of the users offline if needed.

Oh , and to help minimise hard drive fragmentation , set the page file to be a fixed size rather than a variable one between two limits. As it shrinks and grows it'll mess up the disk quickly.

One more thing while I;m typing , exchange 2003 standard edition service pack two is out soon and that ups the limit from 16gb to 75gb Very handy that will be.

Backup daily..............I suspect that our "expert" didn't have a clue about ES - he also managed to leave us with an open mail relay :eek: :eek: That made us popular

He was probably just backing up all the files on the drive rather than using an exchange-aware backup utility that flushed the logs.

Ah well......

Your hard drive looks like it would benefit from a defrag (this can be done with the store online) but also the actual message store itself can be defragmented.

The message store grows as required ' date=' but if a load of emails are deleted then the message store itself stays the same size. It automatically runs an online defrag which moves the data to the start of the file and the space to the end but thats all. An offline defrag will remove the empty space entirely.

Before you start to add new users it's worth doing this one weekend when you can take it offline. How many message stores do you have at the mo? It's worth using multiple ones to keep the file sizes down and so you can take just a portion of the users offline if needed.

Oh , and to help minimise hard drive fragmentation , set the page file to be a fixed size rather than a variable one between two limits. As it shrinks and grows it'll mess up the disk quickly.

One more thing while I;m typing , exchange 2003 standard edition service pack two is out soon and that ups the limit from 16gb to 75gb Very handy that will be.[/quote']

We only have one message store at the mo, but im considering splitting it into two, as the people we are adding are theoretically from a separate company (office politics - thats why muppets are "allowed" to have 3.5gig mailboxes)

is it easy to create and move some mailboxes to another store on the same box?

Colin, we use strict mailbox limits across the board. Each user has a max size mailbox of just 80MB, once that is reached they are unable to send email but can still recieve it.

The key here is good housekeeping, I mean how many emails about eastenders or coronation street do they need to keep, can attachments be saved elsewhere and the email itself deleted, do they empty their deleted items folder as examples. If they need to keep it, by requesting it through us we will create a personal folder file separate from exchange and they can keep it in there.

As dr.z has already said, recovering an exchange box with circular logging on is difficult and can result in many hours of hair pulling. Please switch it off and get an exchange aware backup solution, eg. Arcserve or Backup exec with the exchange plugins, dont just do a backup of the hard disks as recovery is virtually impossible in that situation if the server goes down. Using an aware solution, the logs are cleared after a successfull backup. Our log drive is 2GB in size and even if the daily backup fails we have no problems.

We only have one message store at the mo' date=' but im considering splitting it into two, as the people we are adding are theoretically from a separate company (office politics - thats why muppets are "allowed" to have 3.5gig mailboxes)

is it easy to create and move some mailboxes to another store on the same box?[/quote']

We had the same sort of thing with people having 1gb of tat cluttering up the server which I think I've now got under control.

As for moving mailboxes , just go into active directory users and computers , right click - exchange tasks - move mailbox

We had the same sort of thing with people having 1gb of tat cluttering up the server which I think I've now got under control.

As for moving mailboxes ' date=' just go into active directory users and computers , right click - exchange tasks - move mailbox[/quote']

can this be done whilst users are online? or will it mess up?

EDIT: also, whats the difference between having separate mailstores and separate administrative groups? :confused:

also i presume you cant have more than one adminastrative group on the same exchange box?

It's best to get them to close outlook while you move the mailbox or they can get errors.

Admin groups are used to delegate control and some policies but that only applies when you have multiple servers.