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Good morning,
Recently I have noticed that drive space on one of the Exchange databases is slowly dropping. The Exchange Full backups are running as expected and circular logging is off. The mailbox counts on this database is close to what the others have so it appears to be a pretty even spread, but for this particular database it has far less space available while all the other databases have very high percentages giving us a lot of wiggle room.
I know that moving mailboxes from the database with low space does not just free up drive space on the servers impacted, so what is the appropriate fix to increasing the drive space availability on this database/server and creating a more balanced environment?
Thank you for any input you you may have,
CWT
Do you have space on that server to create a new database?
If so, I would create a new one, move some ( not all) of the mailboxes to this new database so its smaller. You will have to determine how many.
Then, for the remaining mailboxes, spread them out ( moving them) to the other existing databases.
Ensure you also move any arbitration mailboxes that may be on this DB.
Finally, delete the now empty database and remove its corresponding transaction logs.
Well, thats the thing, if you dont have space to create a new database, then your only option is to move all the existing mailboxes on that larger DB to the other DBs and spread them out.
You can then remove the original database and move some of those moved mailboxes back ( but not all!) to a new database , but any additional space added to those other databases wont be released on disk, just in white space within the database. This will work of course, and if that is your only option, thats the one I would take.
As far as the arbitration mailboxes, moving them alone probably wont make much difference and the space on disk wont be released regardless.
Morning Andy,
Unfortunately we do not have space at this point on the DB/Server we are low on to create a new database. Do you think moving any arbitration mailboxes we have on the problematic DB/Server would free up space? Can moving mailboxes from this server to other ones help free up space on this one?
Thanks for the reply (wish this was an option). Crazy thing is that the counts are very balanced across them all, but ofcourse sizes of each mailbox are clearly not :o)
CWT
Thanks Andy.
Much appreciated sir.
CWT
Bingo! Correct :)