How can I tell the amount of fragmented space on the exchange database. We did an offline defrag back in Jan 2010 to clear up about 50GB of space. And now I just let Exchange do its online defrag. Which now EventID 1221 tells me that I have 400MB's of free space. We are experiencing issues with random emails not being backed up, using BackupExec. And Symantec is telling me that the database fragmentation could be the cause. I don't buy it. So - is there any way I can see the percentage of fragmentation on the database? Ideally without dismounting. Thanks - SJMP

Dear SJMP, I also doubt the veracity of your vendor's statement. If you're running online maintenance and it's completing regularly, your Exchange database is in a happy place and the percentage of fragmentation is minimal. When you say "issues with random emails not being backed up", it makes me wonder if you're doing mailbox backups (AKA brick backups) instead of VSS or streaming backups. Is that the case? Missy

Not doing brick backups. Have not done those since 1995. Using Vss/ESE & GRT for granular restore. But backing the full database not per mailbox. So anyway to get the frag %?

There's no frag % readily available. What you can see is the white space (as you mentioned - 1221 event). Online maintenance defragments the database as it goes and gathers the white space into a sort-of-contiguous patch, alleviating worries about fragmentation. How big is the database? 400 MB of white space is nothing, really. Missy

Hi, Definetly agree with you in not buying the vendors statement. In one word there is no event which indicates the % of fragmention. It is available in other way event id: 1221, which you are already aware off. Other events which you might intrest you are 700 & 701. 701 specifically tells how many times your database has been defragmentated till date. Having said that if you do not want to perform offline defrag on the db, you can increase the database maintaince schedule duration for one day by few more hours during off business hours and make sure you backup jobs are not conflicting with the maintainance schedule of the database.. this is just to not over burden the server. By increasing the maintainance schedule for a day or two you should see less than even 100 MB of whitespace in the db. Considering there is only 400 MB of whitespace to perform offline defrag it should take less than 30 minutes, provided you meet the prerequisites of 110% of db size free space in the same disk or else it might take some time in copying the db file to a different location and then perform defrag which will still complete in less than an hour or two maximum. Your vendor will be happy and you can proceed with the next troubleshooting steps. Thanks Shiv