Exchange Server Freezing With 100% CPU For 30 Minutes At Same Time Each Day

There are a number of things that can cause that. But you should know that Exchange 2003 has never been supported in a virtualized environment. It should be installed on a fully phsyical server, or you should upgrade to a newer version of Exchange if you want to continue virtualizing Exchange (Of course, Exchange 2003 server is completely out of support and will no longer be supported by Microsoft in any fashion after April 14th 2014).

That said, you should be able to get a better idea of exactly what is going on by using Perfmon to get a trace log of more performance counters, like hard drive usage, memory usage, etc. You should also check to see what time your database maintenance is set to occur. With this being in a virtualized environment, also check to see which servers are also running on the VM host and see if there are functions on those servers that are over-utilizing resources. Because Exchange 2003 was never optimized to work in a virtual environment, there's a strong likelihood that this is a symptom of that. If you can move the VM to an empty VM Host, then see if the problem persists, you will have a better idea of whether it's virtualization issues or the server software itself causing problems.

It's a while since I played with E2003, but if it's happening at the same time each day, I'd be looking for something like the scheduled maintenance settings, or a scheduled virus scan. Or even someone doing a large mailshot at the same time each day.

Thanks for you help.  I was able to identify the issue.  Our RMM tool was the culprit.  Once I uninstalled it, the problem went away.  I am working with the developer to determine the reason.  We had a similar issue with another server in the environment and the common denominators are Server 2003 and being a VMware guest.  I will let you know if I find out more, but thanks for helping me narrow it down.

We were able to resolve the issue