Following some people's very helpful input in my last server / exchange question i thought I'd ask this one ...

We've hit our 16gb limit ... again. So I took the store offline, defragged it with eseutil and off we go again. Then 10 hours later it happens again. Started the process last night, came back this morning to find it's failed with a -1526 (JET_errLVCorrupted) error. Now according to this page, this is an issue with the old s***box exchange we're running:

Link

This may also explain why our database doesn't seem to get any smaller when I remove users etc. So I applied the fix, and am trying defrag straight up again with out the integrity check.

So two questions:

1) why doesn't the data base get any smaller when i remove people and have big cleanouts of email inboxes? Is it due to the issue above?

2) I tried to setup a temporary pop3 server just to so people can get email today, stopped all the exchange services and it still just doesn't seem to have email arrive at it, even when I send it directly to users@ip. Would this be ISA f***ing around with the traffic?

On another note, after the advice from my last thread we should have ordered the new server yesterday... thanks guys.

Hope you didn't order it with 8Gb of RAM.

One more thing, the pop3 server was "quick and easy mail server" by pablo software solutions.

Haha no 4gb, with a single quad core xeon, 6 x 150gb SAS drives. The existing CAD server will do the majority of the file sharing.

what did you end up ordering?

Firstly I think setting up an alternative POP server is a bad bad idea, just wait until Exchange is back up and running. Delivery of email can be delayed for up to a week if the primary MX is down.

So you're still running Exchange 5.5? If it was me, I'd just restore from backup rather than try fixing store databases, they are messy.

Yeah fair point, only problem is the backup will hit the 16gb limit very quickly again too, hence why I'm hoping with the fix the database size will come down a bit, then I can redo a backup that I could use to restore if it happens again before the new server.

Server was initially going to be a poweredge 2900, however due to a sponsorship deal will be a hp / ibm, the accountant should have sent me final specs just before ordering ... but no email .... :/

Could you try and archive off users to pst's rather than removing users?

Get rid of a few of the larger users and then setup archiving for the remaining users to pst's once you have reduced the database?

Not sure if you can actually connect to the mail store though to be able to do this.

There's third party tools out there that let you work on mail stores directly as opposed to having them mounted in Exchange. Ontract is one example where you can archive mail out as Capto says without having to mount it.

If you constantly hitting the limit you realy need new exchange with sp2, 75gig should cover you for a while.

If you got a new server on the way and I assume you will be going to Exchange 2003/07 then I would focus on restoring a backup of the database and then migration of that sucker to the new server. Get the old server back from backup, archive each users mailbox off to a .pst file (they can reimport it when new server is up) then you should be under the 16Gb. I assume that you have a backup MX somewhere holding the new mail so that should be waiting as soon as your server is accepting again. Should beable to get everyone back on email within a few hours.

No backup mx, it seems the messages just get queued up by helstra.

New server is a least a couple of weeks away, ended up being a HP ML350.

Defrag is still chugging along, hopefully it'll get through and I can just remount it then cross fingers for a couple of weeks.

I do actually have a backup from Tuesday, so if this doesn't work i'll do what you suggest Mass.