I've been having some problems lately deleting mailboxes. I've deleted several mailboxes over the last few months from people that have left the company and every time there is an error in the application log and the mailbox won't be purged until 3rd or 4th attempt.
Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSExchangeIS Mailbox Store
Event Category: General
Event ID: 1203
Date: 10/22/2008
Time: 9:40:56 PM
User: N/A
Computer: <server>
Description:
Failed to delete the mailbox of /O=<company>/OU=FIRST ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=<us
Now, I do know the error code means MAPI_E_NOT_FOUND so I'm trying to determine the cause. I'm thinking there is some corruption. I know I can run isinteg and/or eseutil, but that would take a while with a 100gb store and can't afford to have the store unavailable for that long. Wondered if anyone had any ideas as to why this happens. To avoid the downtime, I was considering creating a new store and moving user mailboxes there. The mailbox won't be available during the move, but at least the downtime is only for x users at a time and less than that of running database tools on the entire store.
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I've worked with Exchange a lot and I wouldn't be surprised how long it would take to restore a database that large. The problem is I need to implement mailbox quotas. The last sysadmin didn't bother and some mailboxes are 2gb+ One user (who has since left) was nearly 8gb. For now I'll try dividing into 2 or 3 different databases; some users need more space then others so I'll work on organizing that accordingly.
I've inherited systems like that too - big mailboxes and no quotas - so I feel your pain. I've had cases in the past where I was logging some scary stuff about an Exchange db and opened a case with microsoft and they wanted me to take down the server for x hours to try to repair it and all that - I've always tried to move the mailboxes first and then just delete the database because I couldn't tolerate the downtime. Moving mailboxes seems to be a "cleansing" process in that Exchange won't move something that is really corrupted so those new databases will be pretty clean.
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by: icky2000Posted on 2008-10-22 at 20:15:54ID: 22783027
If you suspect the database is corrupt, and it sounds like you do, moving the users to a new database is a very good idea. You might also consider creating several databases to host those users instead of putting them all in one. A 100GB database isn't obscenely large but it is quite big. Most folks limit the size of their databases to a size they can restore within a reasonable period of time. Have you ever tried doing a restore of that 100GB database? I bet you'll be shocked at how long it takes...