Hi, We have Exchange 2010 SP2 with all the roles except UM on single server. We are using McAfee antivirus. I have excluded all database, logs and inetsrv folder from scanning. The CPU utilization is very high. When I see the task manager, I see lot of msftefd. exe (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Portal Server 2004 Search) processes running, which are using high CPU. I need to know what is this process used for. How can I optimize the usage of these processes so that they do not eat resources. Thanks

As per the below article if I disable Content Indexing then it impacts the functionality and performance of the full-text searches that are performed by your users using Outlook in online mode, Outlook Live, or on Windows Mobile devices. The Discovery feature in Exchange 2010 also relies on Exchange Search. If you disable Exchange Search for a mailbox database or for a Mailbox server, Discovery won't return any messages from the database or server. We need to have both the above features. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996416.aspx Please suggest.

Add more processors, then.Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

The processor usage on a server should maintain a load of about 60 percent during peak working hours. This percentage level allows room for periods of extreme load. If the processor usage is consistently greater than 75 percent, processor performance is considered a bottleneck. Exchange can fully use multiple processors, and using servers with more processors improves performance. However, the relationship between the number of processors, number of processor cores, and performance is complex. The optimum number of processors and cores is partly determined by the Exchange role deployed on the server. And you can start from here.Noya Lau TechNet Community Support

I have added 2 more CPUs, but still facing the same issue. msftefd. exe is taking about 75% of CPU. Please advise

Add two more! Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

Added 2 more CPU. But still the same issue. msftefd uses 80% CPU. But I guess 6 CPUs for 200 mailbox will be too much.

It doesn't seem so. It appears you have a lot of content to index. If you think you're having a problem, first make sure you're running the latest service pack and rollup hotfix, and then open a ticket with Microsoft Support. We're not really in a position to debug this for you.Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."