Exchange server super duper slow

Hello all,

I have an sbs2003 server that as of late has been experiencing major
perofrmance issues. The server itself runs very few programs (qb
database server, symantec endpoint server). There are about 40 user
mailboxes,some over 10g (I know thats not good, but unfortuntely I
cannot change that :( )

Over the last two weeks users have complained about slow performance
of quickbooks and extremely poor performance of OWA. The priv1
database is about 73gb.

I know there are alot of recommendations for exchange memory uses but
they do not always fall into the sbs realm. Is there anything I can do
to get my server back into optimal form? I have uninstalled the
antivirus software temporarily, and I tried to do an offline defrag of
the exchange db, but i keep running into a jcb.dll error.

Any and all help is much appreciated.


The server is about 5 months old, single quad core, 4g of ram and a
raid5 with tons of unused space. Right now the store.exe process is at
655mb

Thank you

Trent

Matabra
Tue Aug 12 07:56:39 PDT 2008

Hi,

Do you get any kinds of errors in the eventlog?

at 73gb you WILL run into problems soon with reaching max file size.

Suggestions:

Hammer on to your users that their mailboxes must be made smaller as soon as
possible. (in some cases this is easy, in some hard but it has to be done)

If this has started suddenly ish, check the RAID array on the server, if a
disk has failed and hasnt alerted you, this is a common reason.

Has anything else changed on the server recently.

Regards,

Matt

"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:caf58389-efae-441e-88f1-6011bf0b07bc@k37g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> Hello all,
>
> I have an sbs2003 server that as of late has been experiencing major
> perofrmance issues. The server itself runs very few programs (qb
> database server, symantec endpoint server). There are about 40 user
> mailboxes,some over 10g (I know thats not good, but unfortuntely I
> cannot change that :( )
>
> Over the last two weeks users have complained about slow performance
> of quickbooks and extremely poor performance of OWA. The priv1
> database is about 73gb.
>
> I know there are alot of recommendations for exchange memory uses but
> they do not always fall into the sbs realm. Is there anything I can do
> to get my server back into optimal form? I have uninstalled the
> antivirus software temporarily, and I tried to do an offline defrag of
> the exchange db, but i keep running into a jcb.dll error.
>
> Any and all help is much appreciated.
>
>
> The server is about 5 months old, single quad core, 4g of ram and a
> raid5 with tons of unused space. Right now the store.exe process is at
> 655mb
>
> Thank you
>
> Trent

SteveB
Tue Aug 12 08:01:05 PDT 2008

If you're already at 73 GB what are your plans when it hits the max of 75
GB? Are the users who complain the same ones with the over 10 GB mailboxes?

"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:caf58389-efae-441e-88f1-6011bf0b07bc@k37g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> Hello all,
>
> I have an sbs2003 server that as of late has been experiencing major
> perofrmance issues. The server itself runs very few programs (qb
> database server, symantec endpoint server). There are about 40 user
> mailboxes,some over 10g (I know thats not good, but unfortuntely I
> cannot change that :( )
>
> Over the last two weeks users have complained about slow performance
> of quickbooks and extremely poor performance of OWA. The priv1
> database is about 73gb.
>
> I know there are alot of recommendations for exchange memory uses but
> they do not always fall into the sbs realm. Is there anything I can do
> to get my server back into optimal form? I have uninstalled the
> antivirus software temporarily, and I tried to do an offline defrag of
> the exchange db, but i keep running into a jcb.dll error.
>
> Any and all help is much appreciated.
>
>
> The server is about 5 months old, single quad core, 4g of ram and a
> raid5 with tons of unused space. Right now the store.exe process is at
> 655mb
>
> Thank you
>
> Trent

Dave
Tue Aug 12 08:03:21 PDT 2008

You've already addressed my first thought, AV. Some random comments:

No one with a 10 GB mailbox should expect good performance from Outlook,
particularly in cached Exchange mode. People who insist on doing this
should at least try to keep folders under 5000 items, particularly the
built-in ones such as Inbox and Calendar. It's been reported that custom
views also contribute to slow performance with Outlook and large mailboxes.

It's not recommended to do an offline defrag of the Exchange databases
unless you have diagnosed a problem that calls for that, or unless you can
reclaim 30% of the space in the database. In other words, unless your 73 GB
database has 22 GB of slack, don't defragment it. (See event 1221 in your
application log for the amount of slack, or free, space in the databases).

I would also resist any temptation to tinker with Exchange's memory usage.
This is much more likely to cause more problems than to help. The RAM
figure you quote for store.exe is not out of line with what I'd expect, and
Exchange will give up some RAM if something else needs it.

From your post, you have not ruled in Exchange as the cause, or ruled out
other issues. This could be another app on the server - in Task Manager,
what are you showing for RAM and typical CPU usage? An app causing high CPU
usage could as easily be the cause of performance issues. You could also
have a network hardware or congestion issue.

I'd start by looking at resource usage, and see if there are any errors in
the logs. Look at page file configuration, free space on all volumes, and
try to get some idea how much network traffic is going on.



"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:caf58389-efae-441e-88f1-6011bf0b07bc@k37g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> Hello all,
>
> I have an sbs2003 server that as of late has been experiencing major
> perofrmance issues. The server itself runs very few programs (qb
> database server, symantec endpoint server). There are about 40 user
> mailboxes,some over 10g (I know thats not good, but unfortuntely I
> cannot change that :( )
>
> Over the last two weeks users have complained about slow performance
> of quickbooks and extremely poor performance of OWA. The priv1
> database is about 73gb.
>
> I know there are alot of recommendations for exchange memory uses but
> they do not always fall into the sbs realm. Is there anything I can do
> to get my server back into optimal form? I have uninstalled the
> antivirus software temporarily, and I tried to do an offline defrag of
> the exchange db, but i keep running into a jcb.dll error.
>
> Any and all help is much appreciated.
>
>
> The server is about 5 months old, single quad core, 4g of ram and a
> raid5 with tons of unused space. Right now the store.exe process is at
> 655mb
>
> Thank you
>
> Trent

Trent
Tue Aug 12 09:21:03 PDT 2008

thanks for all the responses. I work for many different companies so
this particular server i end up working with over remote desktop. When
I log in via rdp, it takes about 5 mins (and sometimes i get booted)
before i am taken to my desktop. When I am in, the performance is
nothing short of horrible. Not long ago, i logged in and stopped the
information store service; after that the server was operating as it
should, so i believe that i have narrowed down the problem to the
store process.

This company has workers worldwide; some use Outlook, some Entourage
and others OWA. Most of the complaints come from users using OWA which
is kinda like working directly on the exchange db.

My page file goes like this:
paging size for all drives is 2046-4092 on the C drive....which I have
just noticed has just barely over a GB of space. I am going to move my
page file to my D drive which as over 200g of space. When I do that,
what size should i set the paging file to be? Or should it be set to
system managed?

As for when they get over 75g, I have purchased and R2 transition pak
and exchange 2003 enterprise.

Thanks for all the help

Trent

Les
Tue Aug 12 09:45:03 PDT 2008

What A/V product? Are the exclusions set appropriately?

--
Les Connor [SBS MVP]
________________________
Get the SBS BPA here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940439/en-us


"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:50986d61-d834-4f0f-a132-081eb6e6527e@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> thanks for all the responses. I work for many different companies so
> this particular server i end up working with over remote desktop. When
> I log in via rdp, it takes about 5 mins (and sometimes i get booted)
> before i am taken to my desktop. When I am in, the performance is
> nothing short of horrible. Not long ago, i logged in and stopped the
> information store service; after that the server was operating as it
> should, so i believe that i have narrowed down the problem to the
> store process.
>
> This company has workers worldwide; some use Outlook, some Entourage
> and others OWA. Most of the complaints come from users using OWA which
> is kinda like working directly on the exchange db.
>
> My page file goes like this:
> paging size for all drives is 2046-4092 on the C drive....which I have
> just noticed has just barely over a GB of space. I am going to move my
> page file to my D drive which as over 200g of space. When I do that,
> what size should i set the paging file to be? Or should it be set to
> system managed?
>
> As for when they get over 75g, I have purchased and R2 transition pak
> and exchange 2003 enterprise.
>
> Thanks for all the help
>
> Trent

Les
Tue Aug 12 09:46:56 PDT 2008

Whoops, I see you've already ruled out A/V.

--
Les Connor [SBS MVP]
________________________
Get the SBS BPA here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940439/en-us


"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:50986d61-d834-4f0f-a132-081eb6e6527e@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> thanks for all the responses. I work for many different companies so
> this particular server i end up working with over remote desktop. When
> I log in via rdp, it takes about 5 mins (and sometimes i get booted)
> before i am taken to my desktop. When I am in, the performance is
> nothing short of horrible. Not long ago, i logged in and stopped the
> information store service; after that the server was operating as it
> should, so i believe that i have narrowed down the problem to the
> store process.
>
> This company has workers worldwide; some use Outlook, some Entourage
> and others OWA. Most of the complaints come from users using OWA which
> is kinda like working directly on the exchange db.
>
> My page file goes like this:
> paging size for all drives is 2046-4092 on the C drive....which I have
> just noticed has just barely over a GB of space. I am going to move my
> page file to my D drive which as over 200g of space. When I do that,
> what size should i set the paging file to be? Or should it be set to
> system managed?
>
> As for when they get over 75g, I have purchased and R2 transition pak
> and exchange 2003 enterprise.
>
> Thanks for all the help
>
> Trent

Dave
Tue Aug 12 09:48:11 PDT 2008

I'd start by moving the page file and see if that helps. Page file settings
are the subject of a religious war, but personally, I'd match the existing
settings, but on the other drive. Leave a 16 MB page file on C - that's
more than enough for a small crash dump - at the same time, you could look
in Startup and Recovery to make sure the system is configured for small
memory dumps.

I've never been that close to the store size limit, so I'm not sure how or
why that would effect performance - that limit is a licensing thing, so I
don't think store size alone would cause a performance issue with anything
unrelated to Exchange itself. However, that server is not using an
unexpected amount of RAM for store.exe - mine with 4 GB is currently using
653 MB and the performance is fine.

I would look at whatever else is using a lot of RAM. It's possible you have
SQL instances that are hogging a bunch of RAM unnecessarily. I've heard of
plenty of instances where people have had good results throttling SQL RAM
usage on SBS (including my own production box), but never where anyone
benefitted from messing with Exchange. Exchange is designed for that to be
unnecessary.

In reading through the other posts, I thought Matt made a good point about
the RAID. It seems that your results in restarting the information store
rule out a degraded array, but I'd look at that anyway, just in case.

My server, with about 20 users logged in, is using about 3.3 GB of its 4 GB
RAM. That's about where it runs. If you look in Task Manager and it
appears that this box is starved for RAM, I'd look at what other apps are
using an unexpectedly high amount. You can narrow down the SQL instances by
getting the PID from Task Manager. Then open a cmd prompt and run "tasklist
/svc" - find the PID, and the output will tell you which instance it is.



"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:50986d61-d834-4f0f-a132-081eb6e6527e@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> thanks for all the responses. I work for many different companies so
> this particular server i end up working with over remote desktop. When
> I log in via rdp, it takes about 5 mins (and sometimes i get booted)
> before i am taken to my desktop. When I am in, the performance is
> nothing short of horrible. Not long ago, i logged in and stopped the
> information store service; after that the server was operating as it
> should, so i believe that i have narrowed down the problem to the
> store process.
>
> This company has workers worldwide; some use Outlook, some Entourage
> and others OWA. Most of the complaints come from users using OWA which
> is kinda like working directly on the exchange db.
>
> My page file goes like this:
> paging size for all drives is 2046-4092 on the C drive....which I have
> just noticed has just barely over a GB of space. I am going to move my
> page file to my D drive which as over 200g of space. When I do that,
> what size should i set the paging file to be? Or should it be set to
> system managed?
>
> As for when they get over 75g, I have purchased and R2 transition pak
> and exchange 2003 enterprise.
>
> Thanks for all the help
>
> Trent

Trent
Tue Aug 12 15:09:03 PDT 2008

So i moved the page file to the D drive and will await tomorrow to see
the results. One more thing to mention, the server seems to be getting
hosed around 11am which is when most ppl (national company) start
connecting to it. Like i said, this problem has only been happening
for about the last two weeks and nothing significant changed on the
server, it seems like exchange has just taken over the computer.
Another thing users complain about is that they are getting
disconnected from exchange in their outlook for about 5 minutes, then
are getting reconnected.

Ive worked with many exchange servers before but this one really has
me stumped. any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Trent

Trent
Wed Aug 13 07:02:12 PDT 2008

so i did the page file switch and use disk director to make the C
partition much larger but it doesnt look like it helped any. The
server seems to be a bit better but not back up to how it was
performing. it seems like the exchange store is somehow draining my
server but task manager shows much RAM available and the processor
utilization being between 0 and 10%. When I stop the info store
service everything goes back to normal. Should i reinstall exchange???

Thanks,

Trent

SteveB
Wed Aug 13 08:23:13 PDT 2008

Perhaps you should just move ahead with the transition pack and put Exchange
on a 2nd server.

"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:72505ad2-d581-42ef-8000-00aab70fdb27@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> so i did the page file switch and use disk director to make the C
> partition much larger but it doesnt look like it helped any. The
> server seems to be a bit better but not back up to how it was
> performing. it seems like the exchange store is somehow draining my
> server but task manager shows much RAM available and the processor
> utilization being between 0 and 10%. When I stop the info store
> service everything goes back to normal. Should i reinstall exchange???
>
> Thanks,
>
> Trent

Dave
Wed Aug 13 09:11:36 PDT 2008

I would not reinstall Exchange without having diagnosed the problem.

I'm no expert on this, but here's my thinking. I think that the hardware
you describe could easily support 500 mailboxes without performance issues.
So, you might be running some other apps on that box above what a simple
Windows Server plus Exchange would be doing, but not enough to overcome the
fact that you could be supporting ten times the number of mailboxes. Next,
I'm thinking that Exchange on SBS is pretty close to bulletproof - you just
don't see a lot of issues from people who are running SBS with Exchange in
something approximating the default configuration. And, Exchange logs like
crazy, yet you're not seeing errors in your application log.

Now, for sake of argument, let's say Exchange is using 25% of the system
resources. You stop Exchange, and the system goes back to a normal level of
responsiveness. That seems to argue for Exchange as the cause, but what if
stopping a different 25% of the resources had the same effect? What if
instead of having an Exchange issue, you have a network issue, and you're
stopping 40% of the network traffic when you stop Exchange? What if the
problem is a degraded RAID array, and shutting down Exchange reduces your
disk I/O enough to minimize the symptoms?

I still wouldn't mind blaming AV for this. You completely removed it
without any improvement in the problem? You're not doing file-level
scanning of the databases, and you've set the exclusions recommended by the
AV vendor?

I'm not trying to insist that Exchange isn't the problem - just that it's
not certainly the problem. I think it's very unusual for Exchange to
function badly yet not log any problems. So, I'd do some performance
monitoring to see if this could be a network issue, AV, some other program,
etc. I agree that a lot of things seem to point to Exchange, but I would
watch the server around 11 AM and see if resources start to become depleted
at that time. If not, I'd do some further monitoring to see if this might
be a network issue or something else altogether.

"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:72505ad2-d581-42ef-8000-00aab70fdb27@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> so i did the page file switch and use disk director to make the C
> partition much larger but it doesnt look like it helped any. The
> server seems to be a bit better but not back up to how it was
> performing. it seems like the exchange store is somehow draining my
> server but task manager shows much RAM available and the processor
> utilization being between 0 and 10%. When I stop the info store
> service everything goes back to normal. Should i reinstall exchange???
>
> Thanks,
>
> Trent

Trent
Wed Aug 13 11:41:57 PDT 2008

hey dave, thanks for your reply and you do make a good point; since
users are remote (they all have blackberrys too) it could just be that
i am seeing. the complaints are coming from users who use quickbooks
(db is running on server). they say that quickbooks is taking forever
to respond to things that should take it seconds. again, everything
was working fine for months and then this happened.

is there anything in diagnostic logging i could check?

Trent
Wed Aug 13 14:06:48 PDT 2008

another thing i have noticed is that in perfmon, the avg disk queue
length is 100%......it seems to be high then drops down close to 0 and
then shoots right back up again. i believe this could be whats causing
my problem, when i work with the server during the day it will be fine
for a spirt of about 1 minute, and then it will go back to locking and
freezing up for the next two minutes. any idea as to why this value
would be so high and is there anything i could do to cut it down?

Dave
Wed Aug 13 16:08:57 PDT 2008

That does seem crazy. I ran perfmon for about 15 minutes (there are only 3
of us here right now) and the disk queue length showed average 2% and
maximum 55%.

I'm not clear on how you'd diagnose the cause of this. If you have any
server management software that can tell you the health of your RAID array,
I'd look at that first - Dell Open Manage or the equivalent for your brand.
Process Explorer can be configured to show I/O information for each
process - if I remember right, you just click View -> Show Columns and add
the ones you want to monitor. Or, you could try shutting down services one
at a time to see which one reduces that counter to a normal level.

If you narrow it down to a specific app, that'll only be the first step in
fixing it. Personally, if you stop the information store and that counter
drops, I'd call PSS rather than try to solve that myself (unless you get
specific guidance elsewhere, such as an error message that leads you to a KB
article).


"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:83f84a56-4302-4d93-b85e-c859adcd1109@m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
> another thing i have noticed is that in perfmon, the avg disk queue
> length is 100%......it seems to be high then drops down close to 0 and
> then shoots right back up again. i believe this could be whats causing
> my problem, when i work with the server during the day it will be fine
> for a spirt of about 1 minute, and then it will go back to locking and
> freezing up for the next two minutes. any idea as to why this value
> would be so high and is there anything i could do to cut it down?

Trent
Wed Aug 13 19:44:33 PDT 2008

doing some more checking it seems that the problem is somewhere in the
disk usage. The server has a raid5 and 3 sata 250's (ST3250620NS) i
believe. I have run exchange without problems on worse hardware and
didnt have any of these issues. i ran the exchange troubleshooter and
it gave me many perfornace issues that point to drive read latencies.
at this point and i completely lost at what to do now; this just
started happening all of a sudden.

ive checked in serrver manager and the drives are fine and the
controller looks fine as well. i will probobly place a call into
microsoft over the weekend if i cant find a resolution till then. if
anyone has anything left to add, my ears(or eyes) are fully open but
thank you very much for helping to troubleshoot this issue.

Trent
Thu Aug 14 06:26:29 PDT 2008

and yet another thing to bring up, in the exchsrvr\mdbdata folder, i
have alot of logfiles; 125 right now to be exact. I looked at another
server who is just as busy and that machine only have 4 log files. I
remember seeing somewhere that Exchange can get stuck with log files
which can cause heavy disk i/o but i havent been able to find it
again.


any help appreciated

trent

Les
Thu Aug 14 08:04:05 PDT 2008

I had a user attach the contents of his workstation HD to an email, in
preperation for a new workstation deployment. Boy, did that generate
logfiles ;-).

The August issue of Technet Magazine has a great article on server
performance.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc718984.aspx

--
Les Connor [SBS MVP]
________________________
Get the SBS BPA here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940439/en-us


"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:83d1d1e1-acee-4fa9-a2e6-0823fe59cc61@d1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> and yet another thing to bring up, in the exchsrvr\mdbdata folder, i
> have alot of logfiles; 125 right now to be exact. I looked at another
> server who is just as busy and that machine only have 4 log files. I
> remember seeing somewhere that Exchange can get stuck with log files
> which can cause heavy disk i/o but i havent been able to find it
> again.
>
>
> any help appreciated
>
> trent

Dave
Thu Aug 14 09:00:54 PDT 2008

I had a user trying to upload a DVD to the server so everyone could watch
it, a move that pretty much brought the network to a standstill. But a
whole drive attached to an e-mail beats that hands down - got to be some
kind of record : -)

Trent, you've got online backups running successfully and committing those
log files every night, right?

And, if you get more info or solve this, please post back with the details.

"Les Connor [SBS MVP]" <les.connor@DEL.cfive.ca> wrote in message
news:O0jUB8h$IHA.6132@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>I had a user attach the contents of his workstation HD to an email, in
>preperation for a new workstation deployment. Boy, did that generate
>logfiles ;-).
>
> The August issue of Technet Magazine has a great article on server
> performance.
>
> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc718984.aspx
>
> --
> Les Connor [SBS MVP]
> ________________________
> Get the SBS BPA here:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940439/en-us
>
>
> "Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:83d1d1e1-acee-4fa9-a2e6-0823fe59cc61@d1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>> and yet another thing to bring up, in the exchsrvr\mdbdata folder, i
>> have alot of logfiles; 125 right now to be exact. I looked at another
>> server who is just as busy and that machine only have 4 log files. I
>> remember seeing somewhere that Exchange can get stuck with log files
>> which can cause heavy disk i/o but i havent been able to find it
>> again.
>>
>>
>> any help appreciated
>>
>> trent
>

Trent
Thu Aug 14 12:54:13 PDT 2008

I have retrospect as my backup software and it backs up the database
every other night. Last night, just incase I made a backup of the
first storage group using NTBackup.

When you say committing the log files, what exactly do you mean?

Also, is there a way I can remount the database and create a fresh set
of log transaction files?

Trent

Les
Thu Aug 14 13:13:54 PDT 2008

Whatever backup facility you use needs the ability to commit and flush the
exchange logs. This is known as an 'exchange aware' backup. NTbackup doesn't
do this by default; it can, but you need to make specific selections when
configuring the exchange backup.

A better method might be SBS Backup - run that from the backup node of
Standard Management.

I don't know if your version of Retrospect will do exchange aware backups or
not - you'd need to check their documentation.

--
Les Connor [SBS MVP]
________________________
Get the SBS BPA here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940439/en-us


"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:23fcaa3d-f9a4-417a-b331-5d0733421eea@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
>I have retrospect as my backup software and it backs up the database
> every other night. Last night, just incase I made a backup of the
> first storage group using NTBackup.
>
> When you say committing the log files, what exactly do you mean?
>
> Also, is there a way I can remount the database and create a fresh set
> of log transaction files?
>
> Trent

Trent
Thu Aug 14 13:29:01 PDT 2008

retrospect was set to do a full backup of the exchange server which
mentioned nothing about truncating the logs. i switched it to log/
incremental backup so we shall see what happens when it runs tonight.

again, is there any way to just forget the transaction logs and go
fresh?

Dave
Thu Aug 14 13:31:42 PDT 2008

Exchange creates 5 MB log files and stores current data there rather than in
the actual database (priv.edb and priv.stm). When the first one fills up,
another is added. This is partly for performance reasons - the most recent
data gets the most use, and those little files can be read a lot faster or
kept in memory.

When you do an online backup using Exchange-aware software such as NTBackup,
the data from the log files is written to the database, and excess log files
are deleted. One of the tasks that's accomplished by the online backup is
to keep those log files from overrunning your disk space.

So when you do an online backup, most of those logs should go away (I'm not
sure, but I think it'll keep 5 and delete the rest). Other than an online
backup, the only way to get rid of the excess logs is to enable circular
logging. You probably don't want to go that route, but if so, you can
search support.microsoft.com and get plenty of info about circular logging
(it basically moves older data to the databases as necessary, rather than
creating additional log files).


"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:23fcaa3d-f9a4-417a-b331-5d0733421eea@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
>I have retrospect as my backup software and it backs up the database
> every other night. Last night, just incase I made a backup of the
> first storage group using NTBackup.
>
> When you say committing the log files, what exactly do you mean?
>
> Also, is there a way I can remount the database and create a fresh set
> of log transaction files?
>
> Trent

Cliff
Thu Aug 14 13:47:56 PDT 2008

If you are using retrospect to back up the database using just file-based
backups, that is not sufficient for exchange. That is why exchange is
keeping the log files around. Exchange is 'transaction aware' (like SQL
server) and thus should be backed up with a tool that can talk to exchange
directly to make sure the backup gets the files in a consistent state. The
SBS backup does this and then exchange truncates and removes the unnecessary
log files. Retrospect *can* do this with the purchase of the Exchange
agent, which you'll need if you choose to continue using Retrospect.

So the question is, do you have the Exchange agent for Retrospect?

-Cliff

"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:23fcaa3d-f9a4-417a-b331-5d0733421eea@m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
>I have retrospect as my backup software and it backs up the database
> every other night. Last night, just incase I made a backup of the
> first storage group using NTBackup.
>
> When you say committing the log files, what exactly do you mean?
>
> Also, is there a way I can remount the database and create a fresh set
> of log transaction files?
>
> Trent

Trent
Thu Aug 14 13:54:50 PDT 2008

I have the SBS version of retrospect which includes the exchange
agent. I guess it could be worth it to run a backup using sbs backup
once just to see if it makes an effect

Dave
Thu Aug 14 14:11:11 PDT 2008

If you can look at the mdbdata directory upon completion of an online backup
of Exchange, it should be immediately obvious if something is wrong. I'm
not sure how many logs you'll have when the backup completes (as I said
before, I think it's 5), but if you have many more than that left, your
backup isn't working properly.


"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:695ea99d-3574-4219-a63e-d1cedfbe3dbe@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
>I have the SBS version of retrospect which includes the exchange
> agent. I guess it could be worth it to run a backup using sbs backup
> once just to see if it makes an effect

Trent
Thu Aug 14 21:54:08 PDT 2008

so after another day of pulling my hair out trying to figure this out
here is where i am: in the mdbdata folder on my c drive (exch db on
separate partition), exchange is generating the eXXXX.log files very
frequently; sometimes every minute. I restarted the server and after
an hour it generated over 400mb worth. What i am thinking is there may
be a client somewhere out in the world who may be trying to send
something thats way way way too big and exchange is trying to write it
to the database OR exchange is stuck on someones message and its
getting caught in a loop.

either way, microsoft support here i come tomorrow night. Hopefully by
Monday I will be able to post a solution to this problem

Les
Fri Aug 15 07:58:19 PDT 2008

There's a lot of activity if you're getting logfiles generated at that
level.

Look at your queues, look at message tracking center, look at your server
performance report (for an idea of who the heavy users are). You can also
turn on SMTP logging and get some detail on what's coming/going.

--
Les Connor [SBS MVP]
________________________
Get the SBS BPA here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940439/en-us


"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ddd02919-dcc8-4c94-a855-5009d128a518@m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
> so after another day of pulling my hair out trying to figure this out
> here is where i am: in the mdbdata folder on my c drive (exch db on
> separate partition), exchange is generating the eXXXX.log files very
> frequently; sometimes every minute. I restarted the server and after
> an hour it generated over 400mb worth. What i am thinking is there may
> be a client somewhere out in the world who may be trying to send
> something thats way way way too big and exchange is trying to write it
> to the database OR exchange is stuck on someones message and its
> getting caught in a loop.
>
> either way, microsoft support here i come tomorrow night. Hopefully by
> Monday I will be able to post a solution to this problem
>
>

Trent
Fri Aug 15 08:53:17 PDT 2008

nother question that is sorta related; lets say i have a user who
attempted to upload a 1gb video file to an email, is there anyway i
could tell exchange to stop them from uploading that file? previously
there were no limits set; i have since changed the limits for sending
and receiving. i feel like a certain user is trying to do something big

Les
Fri Aug 15 13:58:53 PDT 2008

You're on the right track with send/receive size limits.

--
Les Connor [SBS MVP]
________________________
Get the SBS BPA here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940439/en-us


"Trent Hewitt" <TrentLHewitt@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:b3495b64-3d68-47ee-88dc-b6d5d4fe41c8@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...
> nother question that is sorta related; lets say i have a user who
> attempted to upload a 1gb video file to an email, is there anyway i
> could tell exchange to stop them from uploading that file? previously
> there were no limits set; i have since changed the limits for sending
> and receiving. i feel like a certain user is trying to do something big