sbalawajder
asked on
Exchange server acting funny....
I have been experiencing this problem for the past 2 weeks or so.
Every day, usually around 5am, one of my users in europe has been forced to reboot my exchange server. Every time he opens Outlook, or uses our web-based email, he gets a "Outlook can not open the set of folders" message. For my local LAN users, the connection to exchange is simply lost. The only way I have been able to resolve this is to reboot the machine and all is well for a day (literally). It is a Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition SP2 machine.
I have hunted through the event logs and nothing in there seems to be out of whack. Any ideas as to what could be causing this issue?
Every day, usually around 5am, one of my users in europe has been forced to reboot my exchange server. Every time he opens Outlook, or uses our web-based email, he gets a "Outlook can not open the set of folders" message. For my local LAN users, the connection to exchange is simply lost. The only way I have been able to resolve this is to reboot the machine and all is well for a day (literally). It is a Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition SP2 machine.
I have hunted through the event logs and nothing in there seems to be out of whack. Any ideas as to what could be causing this issue?
David Beveridge
Have you run out of CALs?
heh no CAL checking except in SBS. Even if there were, it wouldn't kill the server.
Processor, memory and disk usage all normal during a failure?
Restarting Exchange services presumably does nothing?
What patch level for Exchange?
Chris
ASKER
Processor, memory, disk, etc all seem to be fine. Restarting the services didnt fix anything
The version is 6.5.7638.1.........not sure if that is what you mean by patch level
The version is 6.5.7638.1.........not sure if that is what you mean by patch level
During the failure is the network card at all functional?
Service packs :)
Chris
ASKER
WEll, after rummaging through the event logs, I noticed this very interesting log:
Exchange store 'First Storage Group\Mailbox Store (EXCHANGE1)': The logical size of this database (the logical size equals the physical size of the .edb file and the .stm file minus the logical free space in each) is 42 GB. This database size has exceeded the size limit of 40 GB.
This database will be dismounted immediately.
Could this be my problem? If so...how in the world do I fix this?
Exchange store 'First Storage Group\Mailbox Store (EXCHANGE1)': The logical size of this database (the logical size equals the physical size of the .edb file and the .stm file minus the logical free space in each) is 42 GB. This database size has exceeded the size limit of 40 GB.
This database will be dismounted immediately.
Could this be my problem? If so...how in the world do I fix this?
ASKER
And the NIC never fails (as my guy in Europe is able to remotely connect to the machine to reboot it using the VPN connection we have set up between our sites)
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ASKER
Before I do that, how can I verify the version of Exchange that I am running?
You're running Exchange 2003 SP2 according to the version number above.
You might be able to check if you open up Exchange System Manager, drill down and select the Servers folder then look at the information in the pane on the right.
Chris
ASKER
OK...the KB article seems straightforward...I will give that a try
If that's all it is... remember that if you do get as far as the 75Gb limit you're a bit stuck. It would be sensible to re-evaluate mailbox size limits to prevent too much growth in the database.
If that doesn't work there's always a possible upgrade to Exchange 2007, that has size limits set for the Standard edition, but they can be increased to 16Tb (16384Gb, maximum possible size, effectively unlimited) for each of the 4 or 5 possible stores (depending on if you have public folders or not).
The upgrade isn't really trivial, this comment is only intended to make you aware of the possibility. Practicality is another thing entirely :)
Chris
ASKER
Just an FYI, after doing what the KB article said for me to do, my mailbox stores become corrupted and I have been forced to do a restore. Email has been down for about 6 hours now....I guess I should have attempted this on off-work hours instead of the beginning of the day...
Oh good... just what you need...
It was dismounted prior to changing the registry value?
And the size of the .edb and .stm on the disk are reporting correctly in event viewer?
Chris
ASKER
Never dismounted prior to changing it
I am still awaiting for my restore to be done. I propose this question:
If i change the reg value after the restore is done (I have all exchange services stopped), then reboot the machine......I should be (hypothetically?) good to go?
I am still awaiting for my restore to be done. I propose this question:
If i change the reg value after the restore is done (I have all exchange services stopped), then reboot the machine......I should be (hypothetically?) good to go?
Yep, if you followed the steps in the article (which do only state restart after changing the entry) then it should have been find as well.
Did you find you had a current value set to 40Gb in there?
Chris
ASKER
There was a current value of 40 in there.
Just an FYI, the restore got done around 11 last night, and the server is back up and running.
I will be talking to Microsoft today (have an open ticket) regarding the db size today.
Just an FYI, the restore got done around 11 last night, and the server is back up and running.
I will be talking to Microsoft today (have an open ticket) regarding the db size today.
Sounds good to me. Hopefully they'll be able to resolve this for you.
Chris
ASKER
OK, meant to do this yesterday. After walking through with MS on the KB article, it worked and DB size was made bigger. I will award you full points since you did give me the correct answer...just whatever I did the first time around didnt seem to want to work