DB Drive Full!
One of our exchange stores is full just the database not the logs, we store the logs separatley. I'm trying to use Get-MailboxStatistics but it's failing me on getting the info I need. How does everyone deal with this type of situation?David Jenkins
November 7th, 2011 2:06pm

Hi, I think the database isn´t mounted and is not able to be mounted because the database is full. 1) Have you got a possibility to enlage the partition the database risides on. 2) if this is the case then you are able to do a offline defragmentation in order to get more space available. this is one example: eseutil /d Database_Nam But I think you should try to enlarge the databasepartition. Further information you will find on: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328804/en regards Thomas Paetzold visit my blog on: http://sus42.wordpress.com
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November 7th, 2011 2:40pm

You can just move the database path to a drive with enough space; 2010: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351168.aspx 2007: http://exchangeserverpro.com/move-exchange-2007-storage-group-database-paths 2003: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821915Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope
November 7th, 2011 2:42pm

Wish I could. The db is online still. I might have to see if I have a spare terabyte laying around. David Jenkins
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November 7th, 2011 3:40pm

have you checked the free space in the database in order to decide if it is useful to start a offline defragmentation in order to get free space on the drive. Check for event 1221 in the Application Eventlog. (Exchange 2003 and older) get-mailboxstatistics -database <Name of the Database> -status regards Thomas Paetzold visit my blog on: http://sus42.wordpress.com
November 7th, 2011 3:51pm

I would move it first to allow for any back logs to be rolled up/committedTroy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope
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November 7th, 2011 3:58pm

We had disks partitioned to have the db on one partition and the logs on another. We moved the logs to another drive, removed the log partition and extended the db partition. That brought things back online. Now I'm trying to determine what happened. Why things filled up the way they did.David Jenkins
November 8th, 2011 9:10am

We just changed the failover to the secondary to let the logs play back. We think there is db corruption on the primary.David Jenkins
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November 8th, 2011 12:07pm

The db is still very large. We noticed that the maintenance was getting killed by backups, but it was finishing after about a week. I'm trying to determine why the db got so large. It doubled in size in less than a week. I'm talking a 200gb db went to 500gb in 7 days. Any ideas how I can figure out what caused that?David Jenkins
November 9th, 2011 11:55am

How much white space is within the DB?Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope
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November 9th, 2011 11:57am

Not sure. The DB is online so I can't run ESEUTIL. It's Exch 2007. I see there is a new posh command for 2010. Any idea how to find that without unmounting the db?David Jenkins
November 9th, 2011 12:04pm

Look for event 1221 in the event viewer and it will tell you the approximate amount of free white space available for recovery. But check this article out as well I think it may help http://blogs.technet.com/b/dblanch/archive/2009/04/24/tracking-down-exchange-2007-database-bloat.aspx Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope
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November 9th, 2011 12:18pm

It shows 106374 mb freespace after defrag. Still looking at the article about bloat.David Jenkins
November 9th, 2011 2:37pm

so your db as about 106GB of white space which is allot for sure but it doesn't make up for the 300GB in growth you are seeing I would run query to look at MB sizes since I think that will point you in the right direction of whats going on and to display mailbox size in Exchange 2007 run this command in Exchange Management Shell. get-mailboxstatistics | fl displayname, totalitemsize To pipe the output into a text file you can do this and then open the file in Excel to sort by size etc get-mailboxstatistics | fl displayname, totalitemsize > c:\mailboxsize.txt Also see http://blog.bruteforcetech.com/index.php/archives/491 You might find these interesting as well http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/tools/using-exchange-server-2007-built-in-scripts-part2.html Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope
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November 9th, 2011 3:18pm

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-MailboxStatistics -Database pobox\sg3\sg3 | Measure-Object TotalDeletedItemSize -sum | foreach {$_.Sum/1gb} 10.7993702283129 [PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-MailboxStatistics -Database pobox\sg3\sg3 | Measure-Object TotalItemSize -sum | foreach {$_.Sum/1gb} 237.362191650085 David Jenkins
November 9th, 2011 3:25pm

The DB file size is 492 gb not including catalogue data. If I subtract the total of the whitespace, deleted size and total item size we have 140 gb’s of unaccounted for space being used.David Jenkins
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November 9th, 2011 4:08pm

By deleted size do you mean items held in deleted item retention?Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope
November 9th, 2011 4:10pm

I'm talking about the TotalDeletedItemSize which I show in the POSH command above. I turned down the retention period to only 1 day to see if that would help. Is there a way to total the deleted items being help in retention?David Jenkins
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November 9th, 2011 4:11pm

I see I'm not the only one with drive growing rapidly. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchangesvradmin/thread/d98aa9f7-d3da-4d64-b29a-a0661f897508 David Jenkins
November 9th, 2011 4:53pm

Are you by chance running a 3rd party archiving solution that uses stubbing? I know there have been some issues with that causing DB growthTroy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope
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November 9th, 2011 5:30pm

Were using Postini and Journal Archiving. No stubbing. http://www.postini.com/webdocs/archiving/en_US/arch_ex07_config/archiving_ex07_config.pdf David Jenkins
November 9th, 2011 5:47pm

At least I think no stubbing.David Jenkins
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November 9th, 2011 5:47pm

Ok so everything is written to a journal and then Postini pulls that information from the journal and doesn't remove anything from the main database, correct? Were you able to pinpoint any particular mailboxes that had been growing recently or ? Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope
November 9th, 2011 5:52pm

Correct on the Postini stuff. I haven't seen anything in mailbox stats that would indicate a specific user. Most users are within their quota. Nobody is allowed unlimited mailbox size and nobody was over 6 gb's for those that are special. It certainly doesn't explain the db doubling in size over just a few days. I keep going over what could be the causes for a DB to double in size in less than a week. I don't really see evidence of message looping, the deleted items retention period hasn't changed, there hasn't been any mailbox moves or anything of that nature. I was wondering if there was some sort of log I could look at that would pinpoint if someone was doing something dumb like copying a bunch of old email from a PST to their mailbox, but even that wouldn't be 200gb worth. David Jenkins
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November 9th, 2011 5:58pm

If you have users with iPhones or Smart Phones using ActiveSync then one of the quickest ways to see if this is the issue is to have users shot those phones off to see if the problem is resolved. If it is one or more iPhones then perhaps look at what IOS they are on and get them to update to the latest version or adjust the ActiveSync connection timeout. NOTE: There was an issue where iPhones caused runaway transactions logs and I believe it was resolved with IOS 4.0.1 There was also a problem with the MS CRM client awhile back so if you are using that check out this link. http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/crm/thread/6fba6c7f-c514-4e4e-8a2d-7e754b647014 I would also deploy some tracking methods to see if you can hone in on the culprits, i.e. If you want to see if the problem is coming from an internal Device/Machine you can use one of the following MS USER MONITOR: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=9A49C22E-E0C7-4B7C-ACEF-729D48AF7BC9&displaylang=en and here is a link on how to use it http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Microsoft-Exchange-Server-User-Monitor.html And this is a great article as well http://blogs.msdn.com/b/scottos/archive/2007/07/12/rough-and-tough-guide-to-identifying-patterns-in-ese-transaction-log-files.aspx You should also check out ExMon since you can use it to confirm which mailbox is unusually active , and then take the appropriate action. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=9A49C22E-E0C7-4B7C-ACEF-729D48AF7BC9&displaylang=en Troy Werelius www.Lucid8.com Search, Recover, & Extract Mailboxes, Folders, & Email Items from Offline EDB's and Live Exchange Servers with Lucid8's DigiScope
November 9th, 2011 6:09pm

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