Exchange Server Optimisation

[cyberspace]

It has came to my attention that two of my biggest Exchange woes are very common!

1 - Hogs memory, big time
2 - Virtual memory becomes fragmented regularly, requiring service restart

I have used the MS Exchange Best Practice Tools which has offered solutions for this.

It also said that the /3GB switch would improve performance, however, on the MS Site it says that it should not be used for SBS so I will avoid that.

I have tried to set the HeapDeCommitFreeBlockThreshold registry key to the reccommended value, but when i click OK, it just goes back to zero?

As for the memory, I have read mixed opinions. Some say that this is by design and that its not an issue, yet, how can memory running at over 95% NOT be an issue?? We have 2GB RAM and the store.exe process takes up 50%. After a restart of the service, it drops to 10MB, and now, an hour on, its up to 43. I expect that after tonights backup runs, that this will go back up to its usual size.

Is it worth scheduling a batch file to run after a backup to restart the information store and reduce memory usage?

What other advice is there?

System is an HP Proliant, 2000 SBS, Exchange 2000. Both fully patched & up to date.

Many thanks.


'When all else fails.......read the manual'

 

[58sniper]

No - Exchange is designed to grab that memory. Restarting the IS is just going to cause other issues.

You didn't mention what else you're running on your SBS (such as SQL and/or ISA). But the memory issues that you mention ARE BY DESIGN.

Pat Richard, MCSE(2) MCSA:Messaging, CNA(2)

 

[cyberspace]

Thats for that, in that case, what is the purpose for the memory issue? I will leave it as it is because that doesnt seem to cause any problems, I presume if it's by design then the memory is simply freed when required by other programs, so although it appears to be being hogged, its still there when needed elsewhere? As suspected its back up to 50% usage after the backup has ran.

I have been having an ongoing VM issue where I would get weekly event log entries with "Warning, the VM required to run your exhange server is fragmented in a way that will affect performance"

Usually I just restarted the store as requested and that solved it - however, after running the Exchange Best Practices Anaylzer tool (which is great by the way) I discovered about the HeapDeCommitFreeBlockThreshold registry key which I have now changed so fingers crossed that should clear up that issue.

Theres also an issue of space, i would like to run an eseutil but im a bit weary of it going wrong!!

'When all else fails.......read the manual'

 

[SuZu01]

I have tried to set the HeapDeCommitFreeBlockThreshold registry key to the reccommended value, but when i click OK, it just goes back to zero?


You should try to put the decimal value instead of the hex value, I think there's an error in hex. I put the decimal value from the ms site and it's working fine now, store.exe process doesn't take that much memory since I made theses changes.... and it doesn't grow up after a few hours like it was doing before, now it's more than 1 day and still running fine with this.

 

[JAC5528]

Check this thread out: thread858-571420
It helped my virtual memory problems.
Good Luck!

 

[cyberspace]

SuZu01 - Yes I did that in the end, the way MS explained it wasnt very clear!

No more warnings since, but store.exe is still taking up laods of memory. Since this is by design however, it's no longer an issue.

JAC5528 - Thanks for the link, ill check it out.

'When all else fails.......read the manual'