Hi!

We recently moved all mailboxes from a certain mailbox database to another mailbox database hosted on the same server. The mailboxes show the new database in its properties and everything works fine.

On the old mailbox database, the retention period was reduced to zero, Clean-MailboxDatabase was issued and an offline defragmentation was performed on it to clear all the space on the database and make it completely empty.

However, the case is that the mailbox database is about 10 GB in size at the moment. When we issue Get-Mailbox -Database <DatabaseName>, the result shows nothing. When we issue Get-MailboxStatistics -Database <DatabaseName>, the database shows three mailboxes and huge item counts. The LastLogonTime, although, is empty in the case of the said four mailboxes.

This is the production environment, and we need some guidance on how to proceed with the situation. The mailboxes are fine on the other database, and the users can send and receive emails with no problems whatsoever. But redundant usage of 10 GB is a cost, and we do not want to delete this database since it has dependencies and configurations done on backup applications and stuff.

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-Mailbox -Database "DBNAME"
[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-MailboxStatistics -Database "DBNAME"

DisplayName               ItemCount    StorageLimitStatus                                                                     LastLogonTime
-----------               ---------    ------------------                                                                     -------------
SystemMailbox{8cf4f4a7... 19                   BelowLimit
LastName1, FirstName1     24823              IssueWarning
LastName2, FirstName2     75765              IssueWarning
LastName3, FirstName3     51457              IssueWarning

Our environment uses Exchange 2010. Sorry to have posted it in Exchange 2013 Exchange 2010 wasn't listed in the selection box.

• Edited by ram7489 Thursday, May 28, 2015 7:08 PM Added a note about the forum selection.

Hi Troy,

Wow, thank you for all this information!

and from your perspective the DB contains no valid data, i.e. you say the mailboxes are actually on another db correct?

Yes, the DB doesn't contain any valid data. I'll try the dial toning process and post the results here.

The above process is much faster and cleaner than a defragmentation process when you don't care about the data within.

Noted. We'll check with our managers and adopt this process going forward.

Actually its also good to get a crashed system running again if you have a DB that wont mount and the primary goal is to get email flowing again.

Wonderful! This is going to come in handy. Thank you!

What's your patch level on the server, i.e. are you all up to date?

Yes, we're up to date when it comes to the patches and SP.

If you want to see whats inside that database of question you can take it offline and use our DigiScope product with a DEMO license to peek inside it and see if there is actually any data within.

We'll try this out if it is approved by our managerswe'd need to go through the approval process since it is the production environment. An alternative is to copy-paste this EDB into one of the test boxes and try to peek in, but let's see.

Once again, thanks a tonne!

• Edited by ram7489 Thursday, May 28, 2015 10:35 PM

Great! That makes it have no reason not to try it out. Thank you! :)

My pleasure and while the product is very intuitive and wizard driven if you run into any issues contact our support department and they will be happy to assist and can even do a screen share to rapidly resolve any issues, answer questions etc