.edb and .stm files growing alarmingly fast

[tobowers]

Our Exchange Server 2003 keeps approaching the 16GB limit - but the thing is - when I add together all the users mailboxes - I get about 10 - 11GB

it's gone offline twice - at which point I did an offline defrag and it brought it down to a reasonable level... but then they just keep growing and growing.

I have the maintenance interval set on the mailbox store (1a - 5a everyday). When I had it send me emails - it said "0 mailboxes removed 0kb" - which can't be true because I alone removed about 100MB of data from my mailbox.

What am I missing here... I've followed all of Microsoft's guidelines in their knowledge base - but nothing seems to fix it.

It's not an open relay - it's behind a firewall that blocks port 25 (hardware)

We have an exchange 2003 server running on Microsoft SBS 2003 - POP emails off our dedicated webhost and send our SMTP to same host.

 

[Zelandakh]

Deleted item retention?

<signature sold. new owner moving in shortly>

 

[tobowers]

Deleted items retetion is set to 1 days

 

[Excalibur1701]

If you come up with a solution, please post it here. I too am having the same issue of the files growing at an alarming rate. Right now, both our EDM and STM files are very close to that 16gig mark.

Just a side question, what exactly is the 'deleted item retention' value indicative of? Does this go thru each mailbox and delete the items in the 'Deleted folders'? Or, does it 'delete' the database store of all the deleted items (like mailboxes) from the system side. Mine is set for 256 days.

 

[TruBlu01]

Deleted item retention retains deleted messages and mailboxes for a specific period of time before the are actually deleted (removed). You may want to start usinf mailbox limits also.

 

[ashleym]

Are you doing daily backups of your IS and mailboxes?

AM

 

[tobowers]

We are doing backups 3 times a week. It seems that backups interrupt the online defrag process. It's seemed to help to let it do it's thing a couple of days. However - this solution isn't great.

It's a very strange phenomenon that I can't quite place. Our users' mailboxes don't add up to nearly 16GB - but the exchange store keeps going down (about every 2 weeks) because we've reached the limit. Online defrag makes it better, but it's annoying to keep having to do that.

 

[tmckeown]

Did you ever figure this out?

 

[ashleym]

You may have message looping or a virus even. Are you using antivirus for exchange?

AM

 

[MoobyCow]

First make sure you have both the deleted items and deleted mailbox settings where you want them. 256 days is waaaaay to long, default is 7 days for messages and 30 days for mailboxes.

After that you should look to see if you are archiving messages to a mailbox, if you are then your store will grow at double speed.

 

[Anonym0us]

What about Public Folders? Are they in the same Storage Group? If so, they count too.

 

[greerdata]

Has anyone found a solution for this? I too am seeing .edb file growth in the half gig plus a day, but in system manager seeing no individual mailboxes that exhibit any corresponding growth rate. When I add the individual mailbox sizes up they do not even come close to the overall size of priv1.edb

 

[TruBlu01]

Have you taken any of these steps? also check out event 1221 it's the amount of free space in your DB after online defrags

 

[Excalibur1701]

I ended up doing an offline-Defrag, and it reduced the size nearly 2gig. It took a little over an hour to defrag. It's definitely a weekend job as you will have to dismount the Store.