Exchange 2003 db Maintenance task

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This task is scheduled to run at midnight by default and takes upto 3-4 hours. Yesterday I ran into the 16GB limit issue which caused a whole lot of problems. I asked eveyone to get rid of thier junk and now their mailbox sizes are within reasonable limit.
I’ve set the properties in Mailbox Store to keep deleted items for “0” days and now I want to run the Maintenance task on this so it permanently gets rid of the junk in order to reduce mailbox store size. Can I run this task while all users are logged into Exchange and using emails? Or should it only be run when no one’s using it?
Can this task be run when the store is dismounted? The reason I ask is if the server crashes again, would I be able to run this to defrag and get rid of unused space.

Thanks.

Edit: I’m running Exchange 2003 Standard Edition on Windows2003 server.

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Re: Exchange 2003 db Maintenance task

Sky, you need to defrag the db in an offline mode. The maintenance task doesn’t not really compress and get rid of empty space. its doable. Just turn off all services gracefully and run edbutil:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;185457

Temporarily increase the db size by 1 gb:

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Re: Exchange 2003 db Maintenance task

Sorry, the 185457 was for Exch55. Here’s one for 2003:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828070/EN-US/

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Re: Exchange 2003 db Maintenance task

Thanks Tofi.
I have already done the 17GB fix and I'm running on borrowed space now.

I was thinking that if I first run the maintenance task it will permanently get rid of space occupied by deleted items. Or can I skip this step and just jump to offline defrag do it automatically?

Can I just unmount the db, or do I need to close all Exchange services in addition to this before I do the offline defrag?

Thanks.

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Re: Exchange 2003 db Maintenance task

For the defrag you have to take the server offline. The maintenance task doesn't free empty space (see # 5 at the bottom of # 828070). Dismounting works as well, but its better to just take the server offline once your maintenance is done.

Its either that or get the Ent. version of Exchange.

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Re: Exchange 2003 db Maintenance task

For right now I'll just do the defrag and then set the quota to avoid this from happening. Will look into upgrading once this is under control.

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Re: Exchange 2003 db Maintenance task

Sky, how'd you make out with this one?

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Re: Exchange 2003 db Maintenance task

Tofi - it went well. I did the defrag with /p command in order to keep the backup and was able to reduce store size by 4GB. I'm thinking I'll do this more often now.

Thanks for your help.

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Re: Exchange 2003 db Maintenance task

Going forward I would suggest to start an upgrade plan to Ent. edition. I went thru this a few years ago with a couple of clients. These email users don't learn. :)

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