We were having an issue where our Shadow Protect backups stopped clearing out the logs after a backup. This quickly became apparent when our server started to run out of disk space. Shadow Protect didnt give any errors, all backups as far as shadow protect was concerned were successful. After running Vssadmin list writes we noticed that MS Exchange Writer (VSS) was reporting an error. Our mdbdata4 logs folder had blown out to 20 odd gbs. After years of using shadow protect, we logged a call with mircosfot to find VSS isnt supported on windows server 2003 and as it’s a windows service Shadow Protect support wouldn’t help.

Basically after researching we found people with 2007 exchange with similar issues and related to corrupt log files. As I couldn’t pin point what exact file was corrupt the whole folder requried to be quarantined to mddata4.OLD after dismounting all stores that were referencing it, after creating a new mbdata4 and mounting the stores exchange VSS writers state stop reporting and error and our backup log flushing has continuted on without an issue.

The issue is now we have 20 odd gbs of log files in mbdata4.old that are a whole weeks worth of logs from july 2011. Any recommendations on what should be done with these files? Also, our server hasn’t requried a reboot yet, when we reboot will this cause any issues that 20 gbs of logs have been quarantined under mddata4.old?

Here are the error details to reference if anyone is interested.

CMD > vssadmin list writers, Writer name: Microsoft Exchange Writer, State 7 failed, last error retryable error.

EVENT ERROR:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: MSExchangeIS
Event Category: Exchange VSS Writer
Event ID: 9617
Date:  9/07/2011
Time:  5:47:04 AM
User:  N/A
Computer: GADSYDSRV-03
Description:
Error code 0xfffff8ed when truncating the logs.