Database sizes and stuff. Fill me in. 2

[Valier]

Hi,
I´m pretty new to these matters and I feel worried about the message:
"The database has 1 megabytes of free space after online defragmentation has terminated."
(That is: "D:\exchsrvr\MDBDATA\PUB.EDB&quot

Does that mean that my database are choking and that I´m in very deep water, or does that mean that my databases are in such a good shape that no defrag is needed?

The pub.edb is about 6 Gb in size.

I´m running 5.5 (build 2653.23, SP 4) on an Win NT server.
(Yes I know, I should upgrade, and that is coming, but not now.)

Basically, my not-knowing-this-basic-stuff-status comes from me being the marketing director and the only person that cares about the servers since the former administrator left the company six months ago.
I am a fast learner, and I´ve done some good work on the servers so far, but this is far out of my guessing horizon.

Thanks in advance

Mike, Stockholm, Sweden

 

[zbnet]

Mike

You do not need to worry. 5GB of your 6GB store contains user data, and 1GB is spare space (called white space). When users add new information to the store, it will use this white space up before making the size of the priv.edb file any larger. You do not need to worry, and nor do you need to perform an offline defrag.

I recommend you get a copy of Managing Microsoft Exchange Server by Paul Robichaux, it's an O'Reily book. It's very good, and will answer all these sorts of questions for you.


(It's been 3 years since was in Stockholm, I'm missing it)

 

[Zelandakh]

zb, the event says 1MB free from 6GB. (pedantic I know).

Mike - yup, don't worry. You aren't even half way to having a problem IF you are backing it up.

Don't worry either about NT4 & Exchange 5.5. It is a tried, trusted and above all stable environment. more to the point it is incredibly easy to support...

 

[zbnet]

Yikes, Zelandakh, your eyes are better than mine - a minor(!) mixup in the units. Still doesn't alter the spirit of what I said, though, the priv.edb file will silently extend when this 1MB of space is filled up with new mail. The only time to worry is when the store file size gets near to 16GB (standard version only) or to filling the disk array hosting it, whichever it gets to sooner.

Zelandakh's point about backing it up is a good one. Assuming you have circular logging turned off, then if your backups fail you will be filling your transaction log volume more each day, so keep an eye on your backups - and investigate and fix any failures sooner rather than later.

 

[Valier]

Okidok!
Thanks both of you.

So, I don´t worry now, but I´ll be looking into the backup matter real soon.
I know we backup the applications, but I´m not sure about the databases. If I lose them - will anything else except for the mailboxes and calendars disappear?

And yes, zbnet, Stockholm is great, today we have a few degrees below zero, sunshine and one inch of powdery snow.

 

[zbnet]

Priv.edb has all the mailboxes, that includes the calendar data. Pub.edb has all the public folder data. They share a set of transaction log files. Dir.edb has the directory, which as well as all the mailbox meta data, has the configuration of your Exchange organisation in it. It has a seperate set of transaction logs.

Loss of any of the databases or transaction log files can cause problems. You should check your backups.

The UK is wet, foggy and 5 degrees today :-(

 

[staboogie]

I'm having a problem similar but maybe more severe than this. My Priv.edb is 15.6gb. Microsoft support told me that I should run an offline defrag to lower the size. I have a few mailboxes that I could delete for space, but without doing the defrag, does that help me at all?

 

[Zelandakh]

It will give you some white space but an offline defrag would be better.

 

[zbnet]

Check your event log for the overnight 1221 events, this will tell you how much white space you have in your stores (one event each for pub and priv). There's no point in doing an off-line defrag if you have hardly any white space. And deleteing mailboxes won't help much unless they have lots of unique contents - if they contain copies of emails that other people have then the emails need to stay because of single instance storage, so you won't free the space up.