MDBDATA logs not going away even after a full backup is made

Thanks KCTS,

Yes, it is what I did.
I'm running NTBACKUP right from the server where Exchange is installed and running a Normal backup, yet the logs files are still there...
Any other advices ?

Thanks,

There will be some logs remaining - those which contain uncommitted transactions, but most should have gone. What is the toal size of remainijg log files that we are talking about.

Alright... they are gone on the E: drive (it is where the mailbox store is located)...
But I still have other logs in the MDB data located in the D: drive...

According to what I can see on Exchange System, it is the Group Public Folder and Public Folder store that reside on the D: drive.
These logs are recent, as of today, a few minutes ago.
There are more than 1500 logs files for roughly 7.50 GB.

Thanks.

Actually, from NTBACKUP, it seems that I can only see (and hence backup) the mailbox store, which is probably why the logs files for the Public folders are not cleared ?
How can I back them up ?

Thanks.

When you backup the mailbox store with a normal backup then the transaction logs should be truncated automatically.

If you do a normal backup of the public folder store it will truncate the logs for this automatically.

Everytime I do a normal backup of the Public Folder store, it indeed remove some logs, but not all.
After 3 backups, I'm still at roughly 900 logs.
Shouldn't it remove them all at once ?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I seem to doing exactly as per your instructions...

Thanks.

What version of Exchange is this?  2003?  Standard/Enterprise?

Better than that, what are the timestamps on the D: logs that are not going away?

Either you have the enterprise version of Exchange and are not backing up ALL stores, or you have manually moved transactions logs and those stuck on D: are old - which would be evident from the timestamps.

-red

red,

It is 2003 SP2... I really think it is Standard but I'm not sure... where can I find that out ?
I normally don't take care of the Exchange server.

I'm now at 420 logs files... they are from end of September up to today...
Everytime I do a NTBACKUP, some of them are flushed... it took me 6 full backups (each of them roughly 25 GB) to go from my initial 1500 logs file to these 420...

As far as I can see, all the stores I see on System Manager are on NTBACKUP as well and I select them all... yet, only some logs file disappear instead of all of them...

I guess I could keep doing more backups until they all go away... but the fact that they didn't go all away at once makes me worry...
Should the edb/stm files grow when these logs are flushed ? Because I don't see their files size change but I guess it is OK ?

Thanks for your help.

They should all go away at once.  They are NOT committed during a backup - they are flushed.  The database files should not change when the logs are flushed because of this (the data is already in there).

So you have D: and E: logs?  Do they both have dates that come up to today?

Are there any breaks in the date?

Hi,

After all, I don't think it had any log on the E: drive to begin with since when I right click and do properties on the mailbox store of my server in System manager it gives me this :
"D:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA"
However, the mailbox stores databases themselves are on the E: drive while the Group public folder store database is on "D:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA".
I was not really acustomed with this server yet when I talked about the logs in the E: drive... since I did a NTBACKUP right away and didn't see any log when I checked the E: drive, I assumed there were but that they were gone due to the backup, but that I still had them on D.

Well, there indeed is a break : between the 4th and 12 october, I don't have any log between this period...
Then it starts over again from the 12th with a file named res2.log (which doesn't have the same naming scheme as the others that are like E0001XXX).
3 minutes later than this res2.log file, I have again logs following the usual naming convention... up to today, a few minutes ago...

Thanks.

"in System manager it gives me this :
"D:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA""

for the "Transaction Logs location", I meant.

Excellent - that clears up a few things.

Keep an eye on those logs from 4th of october back - now do another online backup and see if they change at all (if you select them all, it should give you a count of how many there are)

Once you do a full backup, if it doesn't touch them, but flushes ALL the logs from 12/oct onwards, then you can manually move the 4/oct emails and previous somewhere else - they are unimportant.

Don't delete them yet, just drop them in another folder (and compress the folder if you are short on space, right click the folder, properties, compress to save space (you may have to do this on all the files and NOT the folder))

After a month or so of normal function, delete that folder

-red

Hi red,

First, thanks for your help.

Those from before the 12th are gone now.
I'm only left with 120 logs files now from 12th oct up to today.
What do you suggest ?
That I run another backup and see if it flushes all of them ?

Thanks.

Sorry, no : I did just as you suggested in your previous post : ran another full backup.
I'll run another backup now and see if it flushes all the remaining ones and will post the results here...

Thanks.

Hi red,

It seems to be good now : I only have three logs that were just created after the backup finished.
I think that if I do daily full backups using NTBACKUP, I shouldn't have this problem again.
Any idea of what could have caused this issue ?

Thanks.

What were you using for backups before?

Daily full backups is the way to go.

-red