Defragging Exchange 5.5 worth it?

[shadowfax1066]

Hi, do you think we should defrag our Exchange 5.5 server? What does it actually do?

If so what are the command lines needed? and how long if our DB is 18GB?

Andy

 

[zbnet]

Overnight store maintenance (assuming you have it scheduled) is already doing online defragging of your stores - check your event log for 1221 events that should be reporting the amount of 'white space' your stores have. Online defrag doesn't reduce the size of the edb files, it just shuffles all the used pages together so that there is contiguous empty pages in the database, ready to store new mail in. This process works really well in 5.5, and unless you suddenly make lots of white space (say you move half your mailboxes off the server), there is really no need to do an offline defrag.

Offline defrags involve shrinking the size of the edb file. eseutil does this by writing a new edb file. You get an edb file that's just big enough for all your data, and your users can't use exchange whilst you're doing it. It can take a long time to run, especially for big stores. And almost the first thing exchange will do when you remount the store is make the file bigger again anyway, as it has no empty room to store new messages! In general, MS don't recommend running offline defrags unless you have a good reason for it.

 

[shadowfax1066]

Ok thanks, it's just we get a problem if a user sends say a 2mb file to 300 users the whole system slows right down, the store.exe his 100% as does the CPU. We have tried everything, it never use to do this, but has got gradually worse. I have been through all the MS articles I can find.

Any ideas?

Andy

 

[Zelandakh]

what does it say on the 1221 events?

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