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Exchange 2010 on SBS 2011 VM disk space issues
Posted on 2016-08-31
I have a SBS 2011 running as a vm in hyper-v. The exchange drive is running low on space currently has about 18GB free. There is no other data on this virtual disk other than exchange database. We have space on the host to create a new virtual disk and the database is 175GB.
Question - Which is the best method that will create less downtime and issues
Option 1
add a new virtual disk to SBS and then move the database using SBS console. concerns are how long it will take to move and if problems might be messy to fix.
Option 2
Copy the exchange Virtual disk to a new location on host where we have more space and then expand the fixed disk from 200GB to 500GB. Boot VM back up and expand the exchange drive to 500GB.
Please can anyone advise which option may be best or any other alternative solutions
Question - Which is the best method that will create less downtime and issues
Option 1
add a new virtual disk to SBS and then move the database using SBS console. concerns are how long it will take to move and if problems might be messy to fix.
Option 2
Copy the exchange Virtual disk to a new location on host where we have more space and then expand the fixed disk from 200GB to 500GB. Boot VM back up and expand the exchange drive to 500GB.
Please can anyone advise which option may be best or any other alternative solutions
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7 Comments
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No idea how long it will take to move because you haven't told us about your disk subsystem. Is it a RAID 1 of 7.2K RPM drives? SSDs? RAID 5? RAID6, RAID 10? 10K RPM? 15K RPM? Are you moving from one partition to another or one set of spindles to another?
Using option 1 doesn't save much time at all if the disk is dedicated to the Exchange server - it's moving the data and almost exclusively exchange data.
You could also do Option 3 which should involve less down time - create a new Exchange Database on a new VHD on the larger space and move everyone's mailbox over. Each user experiences a few minutes of downtime one at a time as their mailbox is moved. Once all mailboxes are moved, you can delete the original database. You never even have to reboot the server.
Using option 1 doesn't save much time at all if the disk is dedicated to the Exchange server - it's moving the data and almost exclusively exchange data.
You could also do Option 3 which should involve less down time - create a new Exchange Database on a new VHD on the larger space and move everyone's mailbox over. Each user experiences a few minutes of downtime one at a time as their mailbox is moved. Once all mailboxes are moved, you can delete the original database. You never even have to reboot the server.
Thanks for your quick reply
the current virtual disk for exchange is on a Raid 10 SATA but would be moving to a separate Raid 10 15K SAS.
I thought about your option but we would need to update the SBS console to add new users to correct database. also not sure if there any thing we need to update.
If option 2 is viable and recommended, i would prefer to do this as we wont have to re create our backup chain for our DR solution as the exchange drive will be same drive just expanded.
any feedback would be appreciated
the current virtual disk for exchange is on a Raid 10 SATA but would be moving to a separate Raid 10 15K SAS.
I thought about your option but we would need to update the SBS console to add new users to correct database. also not sure if there any thing we need to update.
If option 2 is viable and recommended, i would prefer to do this as we wont have to re create our backup chain for our DR solution as the exchange drive will be same drive just expanded.
any feedback would be appreciated
Active today
There's no problem using method 2, but you're server will be offline for the duration of the transfer and that's likely to take 30-60 minutes
that fine as will action over the weekend.
im just being caution as in December we moved some a vhd file to a new drive and when we started SBS back up the exchange was in dirty state and had to restore using Veeam. I think that were due to some update pending and not finished correctly.
to confirm process
will make sure no pending updates on SBS
if there is update and restart
then do a test shutdown and start up just to confirm no issues as like in December
if ok, shut back down and copy vhd file to new location
edit virtual disk location on VM
expand the fixed disk to 500GB
start SBS
expand in disk management to 500GB
test and all should be fine
Thanks again for your advise, just gives me peace of mind ...
im just being caution as in December we moved some a vhd file to a new drive and when we started SBS back up the exchange was in dirty state and had to restore using Veeam. I think that were due to some update pending and not finished correctly.
to confirm process
will make sure no pending updates on SBS
if there is update and restart
then do a test shutdown and start up just to confirm no issues as like in December
if ok, shut back down and copy vhd file to new location
edit virtual disk location on VM
expand the fixed disk to 500GB
start SBS
expand in disk management to 500GB
test and all should be fine
Thanks again for your advise, just gives me peace of mind ...
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