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Exchange 2007 Disk Cleanup

Ive got an old Exchange 2007 box that we are looking to upgrade soon, but in the mean time I need to free up some space on the machine.

I understand that even if users delete email or mailboxes are deleted then Exchange holds onto the space, is running an offline defrag (Eseutil /D) the only option I have to get some space back?

Many thanks

Lior Karasenti

If you have another partition with free space on it you can create new database on the new partition and then move the mailboxes to the new database and drop/delete the old one.
This way don't involved downtime and also its almost risk free.

Haresh Nikumbh

IF you do not have another partition then then only way to compact an exchange database is to take it offline and do offline defrag - this effectively re-creates the exchange edb into a new file.

you can refer this article for defrag

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Alex

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RedDoorSupplies

ASKER

That's the problem there isn't an additional partition and its probably not going to be worth the cost of getting new drives when a server upgrade is on the cards.

Don't really fancy doing the Eseutil /D to be honest!!

As another question what is the recommended RAID for Exchange databases now if we do get some additional drives?

Server is running around 35 mailboxes and the database is currently 60Gb ish

Thanks

Alex

Raid5 for the tbh, if you wanted to spend the extra money then RAID10 would be epic, but you need 4 disks minimum (6 more likely) and then you loose 50% of your disk space.

Depends on the reliability of your backups to be honest.

RedDoorSupplies

ASKER

Thanks will probably stick with RAID5 then to be honest.

Guess we will have to speed up the upgrade of the server!

Simon Butler (Sembee)

RAID 5!
I don't believe that someone has suggested RAID 5.
RAID 5 is slow, most of the worst performing servers I have seen are using RAID 5. Either RAID 1 mirrors or RAID 10, nothing else. Exchange is a high transactional database, which does a lot of sequential writes. Storage is always the biggest bottleneck. With the size of modern disks, the best way to go is a series of RAID 1 mirrors, ideally separate spindles for the logs and databases.

Simon.

RedDoorSupplies

ASKER

Thanks for the help im going to look at migrating the Exchange to a new server, and will have a look at using RAID 10 I think.

Thanks for the help!