Can mailbox archiving cause exchange 2k3 stores to grow?

[j-mo]

I've been archiving froa few weeks now and things have been good.  Mailboxes are shrinking and at some point I will offline defrag to recalim space for Exchange.  Something strange happened recently wehre I enabled several users for archiving.  These are execs with huge mailboxes - 2 folks in particular had 25+ GB mailboxes.  The LUN they are on had about 9% free storage.  So I started archiving and last night I get a call that they can't access Exchange.  The store is dismounted and LUN is totally full.  So I add space and extend and watch it for a few hours.  I notice that it is definitley consuming space very quickly so I stop mailbox archiving.

Could this be a temp file thing? Is this typical? I did not notice this on other stores but the mailboxes where tiny in comparison so maybe it was occuring on a samller scale?

Thanks for any input-

[phak]

Hi,

I have seen this behaviour also believe it is due to the way the EV service account connects to the individual mailbox and starts the archive process. I really don't know why but I have seen it use upto 10% of the mailbox storage group!

Pete

[MichelZ]

Hi there

If EV archives the messages, everything goes into the Exchange Logs. So make sure you have got adequate log space.

Cheers

Michel