I have a mailbox database that has grown to 739GB. I did an analysis on this store and 312GB of this is retained items! For some reason or the other, the retention policy was not setup. I have enabled it at 14 days, back to the default. The LUN the DB is on is maxed at 750GB, so I want to force online defragmentation to run and manually start a purge of the retained items. Is this possible? I just switched the online maintenance schedule to start at 11am (did this around 10:30am) and go to 8pm, but 11am has come and it hasn't started. Do I need to restart a service to get it to pickup the maintenance window changes right away? Is there a cmd to manually run online defrag OR purge of the retention items?

Which version of Exchange are you using? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328804 http://www.msexchange.org/articles-tutorials/exchange-server-2007/monitoring-operations/exchange-online-database-scanning-part1.html Just know that doing the online maintenance will not reduce the size of the DB. For that you'll need to do an offline defrag that will require 110% of the size of the DB.Mark Morowczynski|MCT| MCSE 2003:Messaging, Security|MCITP:EMA 2K7,EDA Win 7,ES,SA,EA|MCTS:Windows Mobile Admin|Security+|http://almostdailytech.com

Sorry, I am exchange 2007. Yes I know it won't shink the database, but if I can clear up 312GB of the retention items it will keep it from growing anymore for a while.

Thanks for the links but they do not help nor answer my question. The online defragmentation terminated at 5am because of the maintenance window. I've reset it from 11am to 8PM, and I want it to restart but it will not since it has completed for the day. How can I get it to start?

You might want to start it at the close of business on Friday and let it run all weekend until the start of business on Monday.-- Ed Crowley MVP"There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems.". "Andy Schmid" wrote in message news:1395f66d-4f71-43e1-b671-3e810d55fe08...Thanks for the links but they do not help nor answer my question.The online defragmentation terminated at 5am because of the maintenance window.I've reset it from 11am to 8PM, and I want it to restart but it will not since it has completed for the day.How can I get it to start? Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

Ed, This is what I'm trying to do but the system will not do it! Yesterday I changed the maintenance window from 24/7, highlighted the entire block! Maintenance still kicked off at midnight and terminated at 4am! Do I need to restart a certain service? Why isn't it picking up the new schedule????? Why is there no way to manually start an online defrag???

You could try restarting the System Attendant service and see if that kicks off the 27/7 schedule.Note that Online maint. will not run during backups/AV scans etc...

Hi Andy, I suggest you restart Information store service and test the issue again. Any update on the issue?

Andy, Did you ever get an answer to this? We use Exchange 2003. We made some amendments to the maintenance windows but the changes don't seem to be implemented. The servers have been rebooted but this seems to make no difference. Be interested to know the answer if anyone has one? Craig