Hi All,We implemented exchange 2007 for our office at the end of January. I have 2 databases set up for mailboxes. My first database seems to be normal, my second database has a combined TotalItemSize and TotalDeletedItemSize of 29.53GB but the size of the .EDB file is 64.7GB.... and growing. Originally, we had the system set to 'keep deleted items' for 90 days, which i know now is pretty silly and im sure is the reason for the bulk of this issue, but, My questions are:a. is this normal? i understand the white space issue, but backing up 34GB+ of white space each night seems really stupidb. is the only way to 'shrink' the database size, isto do an offline defrag?c. does anybody have a estimate as to how long the defrag could take with a database this size?d. is there anything i can do in the future to prevent the DB from bloating like this.Thanks again everyone..... TechNet is great.Colin

Hi All,We implemented exchange 2007 for our office at the end of January. I have 2 databases set up for mailboxes. My first database seems to be normal, my second database has a combined TotalItemSize and TotalDeletedItemSize of 29.53GB but the size of the .EDB file is 64.7GB.... and growing. Originally, we had the system set to 'keep deleted items' for 90 days, which i know now is pretty silly and im sure is the reason for the bulk of this issue, but, My questions are:a. is this normal? i understand the white space issue, but backing up 34GB+ of white space each night seems really stupidb. is the only way to 'shrink' the database size, isto do an offline defrag?c. does anybody have a estimate as to how long the defrag could take with a database this size?d. is there anything i can do in the future to prevent the DB from bloating like this.Thanks again everyone..... TechNet is great.Colin A/B/C: It is possible that you have a lot of white space in your database. Daily maintenece on the database should shrink the white space. You can check your event logs to see how much space is reclaimed each night. You can use eseutil to reclaim white space but the best recommended way is to create a new storage group and then a database within that storage group. Move all the mailboxes from the growing database to the new database. Then remove the old database/storage group. This will allow you to reclaim the space being used in that database. When using the eseutil the database will need to come off line....D: I'm not aware of a way to prevent the database bloating. There could be a number of reasons the database is growing, spam, journaling, etc, you may want to see how many messages you're sending and receiving in your environment. BP

Yes, please check event 1221 after the daily maintenance, which will show for each database Is offline defragmentation considered regular Exchange maintenance? Online defragmentation has completed a full pass on the database; Review the Application log for event 1221 to make sure that online maintenance finished successfully

Most of the things explained by BP and James... You can get approximate amount of space from event 1221 which you can claim with offline defrag or mailbox move procedure. I also prefer or recommend to create new SG & DB and move all the mailboxes, since it doesn't require to bring your whole Exchange service down (dislike offline defrag requires to stop Exchange Services) and only users are affected at the time of their mailboxes are getting moved. ~ Make sure that you have enough space in target SG log drive because move mailbox generates log files equivalent to the size of mailboxes at the target SG transaction logs file location. ~ You can purge thetransaction logs by running a full backup AFTER completion of move mailbox process. ~ Also keep in mind that when you move mailboxes to another database dumpster items (keep deleted items or deleted items in retention) will NOT be moved and purged during operation. So decision is yours on how you want to go by calculating pros & cons of both methods to purge white space from DB :) I think DBbloated due to fact of 90 days of retention period and online maintainace doesn't shrink the DB. Amit Tank | MVP - Exchange | MCITP:EMA MCSA:M | http://ExchangeShare.WordPress.com