Suggested Retention of Application Log Files in Exchange 2016

Question

Pertaining to Logs in the ExchangeInstallDir\V15\Logging, wondering if there is a suggested best practice for the retention time of these logs. We all know Exchange is a beast and logs a ton (as an example, on one of our 2016 Servers, this location has ~90GB over ~110K log files. About 1/3 of these are more than a year old). To be clear, these are not the Database Transaction logs as those are stored elsewhere.

From what I could tell, the majority of the information within these logs is technical in nature and would provide value mostly in troubleshooting/diagnosing an issue. In which case, I can't imagine trying to troubleshoot or diagnose issues from a year ago.

Thoughts/opinions/documents on the topic?

Answer 1

Most of the diags roll over after 30 days - or they should. You can ensure they get removed:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/50117/exchange-2019-logs-keep-growing.html

personally, I wouldnt keep more than that. If you are troubleshooting an issue, you arent really gonna care beyond 30 days IMO. Even then - you really would be looking at anything even more recent than 30 days.

Answer 2

You can remove these logs.

Check the script in the below linked post to see the script in action.

https://www.alitajran.com/cleanup-logs-exchange-2013-2016-2019/