Exchange generating 5mb log files every minute!!

[mike46]

We have an Exchange 2003 server with two storage groups on separate disks for the log files. Recently one of the storage groups has started to generate one 5mb log file every minute. The only way to control this is to run a full backup every night to purge the log files. The other Storage group is fine.
I have found references to this problem on the net but no suggestions on how to resolve it. Has anyone had a similar problem and been able to fix it?

Cheers

Mike

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

I had a similar problem. The issue was with Mac Clients running Entourage. If you don't have Mac clients then this would not be causing your issue. What happens is when an Entourage client sends an email (to an unresolved address) the message is placed in the Sent items and continues to attempt sending the message. Each time it does this it rights to the Exchange log files, causing them to fill up. Microsoft gave us a hot fix to resolve the issue. A temporary fix, if you are running out of disk space, is to enable circular logging.

 

[nickpark]

I have also seen this... although the issue was a looping NDR message with a large attachment. Copies of NDRs were configured to be sent to the admin's mailbox.

In the same time period, by no coincidence, I also discovered my Disk Space alerts were not working!

 

[markdmac]

Mike,

Exchange is supposed to generate transaction log files of 5MB. They are pre-initialized at that size and when they fill another is generated.

It sounds to me like your other storage group is configured for Cyclic Transaction Logs which reuses the logs but makes a differential backup not possible without data loss.

All of that said, if you are finding that you have a sudden spike in incoming mail then I would suspect that someone is SPAMMING you. I would take a few precautions.

1. Install IMF.
2. Configure Exchange to not send NDR messages.
3. Enable recipient filtering to restrict delivery to valid mailboxes only.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark