Question

Exchange Server 2003 log files incorrectly moved - backup problems and more

Asked by: philodendrin

Two weeks ago, the information stores on our Exchange server dismounted due to a lack of free disk space.

When this happened, the administrator on call panicked and possibly went a little too far in his efforts to free up space and remount the store.

This all occurred during one of the worst (Sober.x@mm) virus attacks we've had here in a long time and it was assumed that all of the extraordinary activity generated an abnormal amount of log files. And this is likely the case.

To further complicate matters, this all happened the first work day after Thanksgiving holiday. This is pertinent because a backup was not performed from Nov. 24 - 27, and thus the database files were not flushed for 4 days. This led to over 3GB of log files and caused the server to run out of disk space and dismount the stores.

To get the stores back up, the admin relocated the log files. He did not move the "res" logs or the E00.log file, but did relocate the E000xxxx.log files to an alternate server. He did not move them back after he remounted the stores because there wasn't enough space. He also did not realize that backing up Exchange would have flushed the logs.

So, two weeks later email seems to be fully functional, but we've been having backup problems with Backup Exec 9.1 ever since the log files were moved. We get "error reading file data" message when BE tries to backup the Public Folder store.

I'm not sure what to do from here. Should we return the 3GB of log files back to the mdbdata folder? I'm also not sure what the consequences of his actions are. I need some good practical advice on what to do next.

Thanks!

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Asked On
2005-12-05 at 12:26:02ID21653841
Tags

2003

,

files

,

log

,

backup

,

server

Topic

Exchange Email Server

Participating Experts
1
Points
250
Comments
1

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Answers

 

by: ChadwhitePosted on 2005-12-05 at 12:37:32ID: 15422679

I think that as long as your database is in a consistent state you should be fine without the old log files. If exchange had needed the log files more than likely you would have recieved an error message and not been able to mount the stores. Too many admins find that out the hard way when they delete these trans logs trying to provide space.

Check the public db for consistency. Use eseutil /mh and make sure it shows a clean shutdown state, but as i said earlier I dont think you would be able to mount the DB if it needed the logs.

Very interesting article by MS can elaborate on what I mean by consistent.
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http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/guides/UseE2k3RecStorGrps/d42ef860-170b-44fe-94c3-ec68e3b0e0ff.mspx
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20120131-EE-VQP-002

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