I have an issue with my exchange server that I need some feedback on. Enviornment Exchange 2007 as part of Essential Business Server. I have a single exchange server in my enviornment. I have 117 mailboxes ranging from 88K - 3.9GB. Recently, I have observed that the .edb file has grown to 100GB. 18 months ago, it was 35GB, 12 months ago it was 50GB. Situation The 100GB file has me concerned about corruption issues, performance issues, etc. So, I archived off quite a bit of the data. I took my 45 largest mailboxes and archived (manually through outlook) off everything older than jan 1, 2010. I haven't added up the .pst files, but I figured I must have had taken off 10-20GB of data. When I run the Get-MailboxStatistics in the exchange shell, it shows that the individual mailboxes are smaller. Issue However, the .edb file is still ~100GB. Now, at first, I was thinking that I had to run eseutil against it. But, I started doing some research in preperation of using eseutil. And, now it's my understanding that the only space that I stand to recover is that space identified as free space in event 1221, which gets logged nightly after online defragmentation. I have gone through all the events since then and that number ranges between 1-500MB. Questions 1. If I have pulled the data off the mailbox, and exchange recognizes that the mailbox is smaller, then why isn't the file getting smaller? 2. Am I correct in understanding that there is no point in running eseutil when the nightly online maintenance only reports less than 500MB of free space? 3. One option that I am considering is provisioning addition disk space and building additional databases. The idea is that the process of moving the mail would drop the bloated space. Also, running multiple, smaller databases would reconcile the concerns over running a smaller database. Plus, I wouldn't have to cause the downtime to defrag a 100GB database. Any thoughts on this soution? Do I need additional licenses to run additional databases? Is there any element to Essential Business server that will keep me from running 2 or 3 databases? 4. Does exchange ever shrink the file automatically without having to bring it offline? 5. Any other thoughts or suggestions would be great. Thanks, Ben

what about ur retention period? Unless u do offline defragmentation u won't get white space. -Bpara

1. The physical size wont automatically get reduced by Exch, Exch will use the White Space within the edb file. 2. Yes, for 500MB there's no point. I wouldn't perform a offline defrag, I'd create another database and move the mailboxes across ionstead. 3. Sounds good, this is what I'd recommend. 4. No 5. Check your rentension periods for the dumpster and mailboxes. Check your Event ID 1221 again.Sukh

Hello, Have you backed up the DB using NT backup or an Exchange aware backup program? Cheers Miguel Fra / Falcon IT Services Computer & Network Support, Miami, FL Visit our Knowledgebase and Support Sharepoint Site