I have an Enterprise Exch 2003 server with a 98GB private information store. I have had my users delete their non essential email (covering several years) but theedb has not recovered the space. I plan on dismounting the store and run the eseutil to manually compact it, but I am concerned about the time frame needed. Anyone here have an estimate of how long it will take given the size of the edb? thanks in advance!

It is really hard to tell, it depends on the amount of white space in the database(100GB of DB containing 90GB of white space takes same time as 11GB of DB containing 1GB of white space) , size of the transactions recorded in the database internally, your hardware specifications (CPU, Memory & Disk I/O Speed) etc... If you want to check then you can take the backup of DB, restore it on some test/isolated Exchange server and do the test defragmentation there, but still it depends on hardware load & speed. In my case sometimes it took 8-10GB/hour and sometimes 15-20GB/hour with large amount of white space. Since you are doing offline defragmentation then here are some of the standard facts. - After deletion of Mails/Mailboxes it will be in DB due to retention period, once retention period is crossed then online maintenance (online defragmentation) will run and create white space in DB, until then you can not see much white space in DB. - Check 1221 info event in application log for white/free space in your DB. That amount of space you can claimsize reduction in offline defragmentation. If it is less then I would suggest you to leave it like that. - You need 110% of free space on the drive where you are do offline defragmentation. - After defragmentation make sure that you take backup. Reference: Eseutil /D Defragmentation Mode Hope this helps...!!!

Hi, To determine the approximate time that is required to defragment the database, please perform the following steps: 1. Verify that the information store service is not running. 2. At a command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER: eseutil /ms "database.edb 3. Calculate the free space by multiplying the number of free pages by 4 KB. 4. Subtract the figure that you obtained in step 3 from the physical size of the database. 5. The figure that you obtained in step 4 represents the data in the database. Multiply this figure by 1.10 (110 %). The sum total is the space that you require to defragment the database. 6. To determine the approximate time that is required to defragment the database, divide the figure that you obtained in step 3 by 9 GB (9, 000,000,000) per hour. Note 9 GB per hour is the speed at which the Eseutil utility runs. Mike

Seriously? ESEUTIL runs at 9GB per hour? That does not have anything to do with disk speed, RAM, or server CPU?

9 GB per hour is the speed at which the Eseutil utility runs. This number is only for reference. The exact number depends on your hardware and production environment. I am sorry if the previous post result to any confusion. Mike

I think you have the time question nailed down.. If you don't have 12 hours to take the system down you could always create a new store and moveall the users. Then you could compact the existing store offline with downtime or simply keep the new store and delete the old. Either way you want agood verified full backup before compacting or deleting. Well I shouldn't say no downtime.. Users won't be able to access their mailbox for 15-45 minutes after a move.. It all depends on your replication period. (thats my experence anyway) The down side to moving is you will break single instance store and deleted item retention. Mail in Deleted item retentionbecomes hard deleted when a mailbox is moved You will also generate a ton of logs equal to the data moved. You will need freespace to hold the volume of the data to be moved plus equal space for logs (where ever you are keeping them) How much Whitespace do you have? Look for Event ID:1221 in the app logs to find out Another thing to think about is your Deleted Item retention period. Youwont see the gain from the mailbox cleanup untill that runs out. Youwill get better results from a compaction after the retention period has passed.