Need to free up Exchange Server mailbox database size ?

[Dushan_Gomez]

Hi Experts,

I got Exchange Server mailbox database disk that is 99% full with just less than 3 GB left, so I wonder what can Enterprise Vault v8.0 SP4 do to free up some disk space ?

Do I just change the archive period policy of the email into just 3 months from my curent company policy 6 months ?

Any helkp would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[JesusWept3]

usually you would make sure you have a more aggressive archiving policy, and also look at running shortcut expiry as well and then make sure you do some offline defrags to free up whitespace, because without that, you won't see any space reclaimation at all

[Rob_Wilcox1]

You might also want to have a look at a few mailboxes and see what composition of mail they have in them.  QUADROtech have a tool ->  http://quadrotech-it.com, and look for the tool called Mailbox Analysis.  There are also scripts on these forums that do a similar, less graphical things.

[AndrewB]

what JW said is right but you're really walking a thin line with using a disk up to 99%. vault stores set to after backup or immediately? you might want to play with that so you dont have to wait for backups to take place. hopefully it's on a SAN and you can grow it a bit. or you can move it to another drive that has more space?

[Dushan_Gomez]

Many thanks for the reply Rob,

May I know what script is that ? I've never seen anything like that before, so would be great if you can show me where to look that script because I don't have a clue at all.

[Dushan_Gomez]

Hi AndrewB,

My Exchange Server 2007 SP1 is running on CCR mode with the Physical RDM connection, however expanding a SAN LUN from the EMC Navisphere could cause a downtime and also possibly data loss ?

So meanwhile, where can I find the setting for  vault stores set to after backup or immediately?

[Rob_Wilcox1]

Here is one:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/downloads/scanning-mailbox-and-summarising-message-classes

[AndrewB · Accepted solution]

CCR? shouldn't you be able to failover (no downtime) and then shutdown the node with the full drive, expand the LUN, and bring it back up? i'm pretty skeptical that expanding a SAN drive would cause dataloss but you have the CCR which like a safety net for you. and i think this situation is critical enough that downtime (at least planned downtime) shouldn't be out of consideration.

anyway, the vault store setting is under Vault Store Groups, click on your Vault Store Group, then look at the Removal Status OR if you right click on your Vault Store and go to properties, under the General tab there's Settings - Remove Safety Copies where you can see it too.

[Dushan_Gomez]

OK, I have executed the mailbox migration from one DB to another and then re-creating it once again, this seems to shrink down the database size, before I deleted the mailbox DB, the whitespace occupies ~ 78 GB out of 125 GB of the .EDB filesize.

So in this case the result I reckon would be the same, after the email archive process by EV is done, then the Exchange Mailbox DB will be left with the same situation of whitespace as above ?

[AndrewB]

after archiving is done, your whitespace should increase (granted, exchange online defrag has to run too). look for event 1221 on your exchange server

[Dushan_Gomez]

Yes that is correct Andrew, from the Event ID 1221 the affected Storage Group got more than 77869 MB of white space.

So in this case archiving email would cause the Exchange DB to be empty thus leaving the space as white space within the .EDB files. 

[AndrewB]

potentially, yes you can get very close if you're not using shortcuts and doing 0day archiving but i dont recommend it.

[Dushan_Gomez]

So what is the best practice that people in majority use for the EV archiving policy ?

mine is set at 6 months and I have reduced into 5 months but now I am still faced with the decreasing mailbox database size.

[AndrewB]

it really all depends on what the demans and requirements are. we have customers that do 30 days, 45 days, 60 days, 90 days, 180 days i could go on forever :) it's pretty common that the older a message is the less likely a user needs direct access to it. you have to find what's right for your environment.

[AndrewB]

and i almost forgot, the other trend we see is quota based archiving. but again, each environment is different.