Can mail to an individual information store on Exchange 2003 be paused?
We want to do defrags (eseutil) of our Exchange 2003 Information stores. We would like to do them one information store at a time to limit downtime (we have 12 Information stores across 2 virtual exchange servers on a 3 node cluster). Can we pause the email queues so that no email can go to/from only one information store at a time? The reason is that after the defrag is complete and we re-mount it, we want to do testing on it before allowing mail to resume to/from it.
The only thing I can see is to stop all the mail queues and SMTP service per Virtual Exchange Server. We want to do this on a per information store level, or even per storage group if possible.
The only thing I can see is to stop all the mail queues and SMTP service per Virtual Exchange Server. We want to do this on a per information store level, or even per storage group if possible.
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If you dismount the store, mail destined for the store will queue locally and when the store is mounted again, the mail will be delivered.
In short, there is nothing you need to do. Dismount the store, repair, defrag or whatever and then mount and continue.
You don't need to stop any services at all.
In short, there is nothing you need to do. Dismount the store, repair, defrag or whatever and then mount and continue.
You don't need to stop any services at all.
ASKER
Thanks for your help, but it is pretty much what I thought. It appears that I could freeze the mail queues (on a per virtual exchange server basis) and stop the SMTP server - but that would obviously stop it at the server level.
I also know that I could just dismount and re-mount it, but as soon as it is re-mounted mail would start flowing to it which is what I don't want to have happening (until my testing is complete).
We are going to look at creating new Information Stores and doing a move mailbox instead (then delete the old stores) to clean up white space. That would allow us to keep our servers up and accepting mail and having a rolling outage (a few users at a time during migrations) instead of stopping mail for an entire Exchange Virtual Server.
I also know that I could just dismount and re-mount it, but as soon as it is re-mounted mail would start flowing to it which is what I don't want to have happening (until my testing is complete).
We are going to look at creating new Information Stores and doing a move mailbox instead (then delete the old stores) to clean up white space. That would allow us to keep our servers up and accepting mail and having a rolling outage (a few users at a time during migrations) instead of stopping mail for an entire Exchange Virtual Server.
ASKER
This did not solve the entire issue.
You can however stop the Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks on the server and this would prevent email being delivered until you restarted it.
So you could stop it just before you remount - check its OK and either dismount and start the MTA or if its OK just start the MTA stacks again.