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Exchange 2003 - Secondary Mailbox Store to deal with space issues.
Sorry...edited Title.
I need to create another Mailbox store for my exchange server as I am running out of space (both HD and
Mailbox size for Exch 2003 Std). Is the best bet merely to create another EDB and move some mailboxes over? I am hoping that I can get my funding for an Exchange Archive product sometime next year, but in the mean time, I need to make sure that the Information Store doesn't shut down on me. I have checked the logs and I have less than 1GB of whitespace after the online defrag. I need to be able to free up some room to give me a buffer until I can implement an archive solution.
Thanks for the help.
John
I need to create another Mailbox store for my exchange server as I am running out of space (both HD and
Mailbox size for Exch 2003 Std). Is the best bet merely to create another EDB and move some mailboxes over? I am hoping that I can get my funding for an Exchange Archive product sometime next year, but in the mean time, I need to make sure that the Information Store doesn't shut down on me. I have checked the logs and I have less than 1GB of whitespace after the online defrag. I need to be able to free up some room to give me a buffer until I can implement an archive solution.
Thanks for the help.
John
ShareefHuddle
What size is your store currently? Is it 74GB?
Have you made the modification to the registry to extend to 75GB store?
If you have Exchange 2003 standard, you can't add another mailstore / database. You could if you had Exchange 2003 Enterprise though.
Your only option to free up space if an offline defrag doesn't give you much free space is lower the retention period & defrag the database or get people to archive mail to .pst files, lower the retention period and defrag.
Your only option to free up space if an offline defrag doesn't give you much free space is lower the retention period & defrag the database or get people to archive mail to .pst files, lower the retention period and defrag.
If you're using Exchange Standard and are at the 75GB limit for your mailbox store, the only option you have is to force your users to archive to .PSTs and then do an offline defrag of the .EDB to recover the free space created. And that's only a temporary fix at best. Upgrading to Exchange 2010 Standard would be the way to solve that problem long-term, since you would no longer have the 75GB storage limit.
If you're not at the 75GB limit for the size of the mailbox store, then you could move the entire mailbox store to a hard drive with more capacity. If that's not readily available on your current server, you'd have to add drive space to that server in some fashion so that you can move the database.
Those are really the only two options you have if you don't have the Enterprise version of Exchange. If you do have the Enterprise version, then you could create a new mailbox store and move some mailboxes, then do your offline defrag, etc. But nevertheless, you'd still have to store that mailbox database on a different hard drive, since you indicate that you're running out of space on the drive where the current store exists.
If you're not at the 75GB limit for the size of the mailbox store, then you could move the entire mailbox store to a hard drive with more capacity. If that's not readily available on your current server, you'd have to add drive space to that server in some fashion so that you can move the database.
Those are really the only two options you have if you don't have the Enterprise version of Exchange. If you do have the Enterprise version, then you could create a new mailbox store and move some mailboxes, then do your offline defrag, etc. But nevertheless, you'd still have to store that mailbox database on a different hard drive, since you indicate that you're running out of space on the drive where the current store exists.
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Consider yourself slapped (virtually)!
I guess that is one of the nicer things to find out : )
Hopefully you can expand your disk space fairly painlessly.
I guess that is one of the nicer things to find out : )
Hopefully you can expand your disk space fairly painlessly.
ASKER
Thanks! I needed that! I have to agree that it could have gone many different ways, and none of them good. I have about 8GB available at the moment. I created another mailbox store onto an External USB drive which seems to be working well for the moment. I don't think there is an easy way to do a permanent solution without replacing the server. Maybe an external SCSI drive. We'll see. For the moment, this seems to take care of the immediate problem.
Thanks again, Experts!
Thanks again, Experts!
ASKER
Answered my own question.