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J MolinaFlag for United States of America

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Large Database warning on Exch 2003

Hi guys, hope you can help me!

We have an exchange 2003 server with server 2003 OS, and i ran the Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool, and received the following message:
Large database warning: The mailbox store "User_Storage_2 on server NJLAWMAIL04 is 104GB in size. It is recommended that the maximun database size does not exceed 100GB

should this of a concern? and how do i fix this?

Thanks
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Rick Fee
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There is a registry key to edit to allow the increased size of the DB.   I take it you have Exchange 2003 Enterprise?

http://www.petri.co.il/change_store_size_limits_ex2003_sp2.htm

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Nagarajb

It is suggested to maintain or limit the Database size to 100GB, b'cas it is much easier to recover the database during recovery purpose and also it takes lesser time to complete online maintainence.
The space is logical - so a physical store of 100gb is not a problem if you have more than 5gb of white space in the store. The size of the store would have no impact on the users in Outlook, unless your storage was badly configured. I have built and maintained servers with stores over 250gb in size and they were fine - because the storage was configured correctly.
However you are correct on the behaviour of the database if you removed all of the content. The simple rule is that the Exchange database never shrinks in its physical size.

I am in the middle of a blog posting on this subject, so I have some text to hand.

The EDB file should be thought of as the MAPI database and will consist mainly of internal email.
The STM file should be thought of as the SMTP database and will consist mainly of external email.

What tends to happen when there is a data base purge is that internal email is deleted, but more external email arrives, so there is a mismatch.
Do you receive lots of attachments from external senders?

As for the IFS files, do not delete them.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/260532

Because there are whitespaces in the edb file, these happen when stuff is deleted.

Deleting items does not reduce the size of your database

Only way to do that is by doing an offline defrag of the database however you would need the space to have 2 database which it appears you do not

Hi jbm,
You can have up to 4 storage groups with 4 databases in each storage group. It is recommended you split your mailbox store into smallers ones. By doing this your database sizes will be smaller, which in turn will speed up backup/recovery of a database, and also, should one database go down, you will not lose your whole Exchange system.
To create the mailbox stores, right click on your Storage Group, and select New... Mailbox Store. Once you have created it, you can then click on a mailbox in ESM and move it to the new mailbox store.
Once you have moved half the mailboxes, you will need to run a offline defrag (eseutil) on you current mailbox store to reclaim the disk space.
HTH,
Harkins
perfectly said Harkins
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ASKER

thank you guys, your notes was very informative, but i need steps...
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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sabk

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Do you have a single mailbox store?
no, i see there 2 mailbox stores