I saw that the 1221 event logs for the mailbox store was down to 500MB so I decided to perform a clean up mailboxes. I exmerge archived all mailboxes of ex users and then purged them from Exchange.II freed up about 10 GB of data however the following day I see that the 1221 event log shows that I now have 420 MB left after online defragmentation.Does anyone know what is happening here? Should I run the ESEUTIL /D command tonight?Thaks

Even though you deleted the data, you created a lot of white space and thus the database didn't shrink accordingly. Defragging the database will recover the white space. Having deleted 10GB of data, I'd recommend doing a defrag. Generally, any large-scale mailbox removal should be followed by a defrag to recoup white space.Keep in mind that you need 110% of the size of the database to be defragged in free space.

Rather then doing a defrag on the database which will take the database off line and prevent mail from being delivered and accessed try creating a new mailbox storage group/database and move all the mailboxes from the old database to the new database.Once all the mailboxes have been moved you can delete the old database and you will be able to reclaim the space.BP

I agree with BP.... Here is the similar discussion where BP, James and I explained in bit detail... http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchangesvradmin/thread/e5c09707-d674-457a-bf14-7ebcfabbdf13 Amit Tank | MVP - Exchange | MCITP:EMA MCSA:M | http://ExchangeShare.WordPress.com

Cant do that I am afraid. This is a Standard version of Exchange 2003 and not the Enterprise edition so I dont have another MB store to create.

You have how many SGs and Databases? What kind of limitations do you have? I'm aware of the number of SG/DBs but where are you at in your environment?BP

Well with Exchange 2003 Standard all you get is 1 SG and 1 MB & 1 PS and a DB size of 75 GB if you have SP2 installed. Thats why I cant do what you are suggesting to do and create another MB store.

Good Point, I was thinking Enterprise.can you put up another mailbox server? Or better yet upgrade to 2007? ;)BP

Ok so let me get this right. Rather than run eseutil /d to see if it would fix my issue I should instead put in another mail server.

that depends on what your SLAs are like. Depending on the size of the DB your mail store could be down for awhile. Moving the mailboxes will reduce your outage time. Obviously you can't use the existing server. Defraging the DB is a last resort kind of deal.BP