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Exchange 2003 help

F

FreshPrince

Diamond Member
we have a one and only exchange 2003 std server that is also the AD DC. This server has a forest trust with our main forest, which houses the user authentication.

We recently added 15 users to our blackberry enterprise server for microsoft exchange. This server is separate from the exchange box. We've noticed that information sotre has increased slowly after we implemented BES.

Today, the information reached its max or 16GB and the store keeps dismounting.

Questions is:

1.) Can we upgrade this exchange to enterprise version? 2 ways of doing it....

a.) buy bigger server and install exchange 2003 enterprise in windows 2003 std or ent? Does Exchange enterprise need to be installed in server 2003 enterprise or can it be done in standard? After this, hope to move mailboxes to this server. Uninstall exchange on current server and let it handle AD DC only.

or

b.) inplace upgrade current exchange 2003 standard AD DC to exchange 2003 enterprise AD DC. Hope that the information store automatically expands without any problems. Right now, there's only 6GB or hard drive left. So, going enterprise this way is really a waste...but it would be the quickest fix.

If enterprise route is not an option for us...can we go this route:

2.) Install another exchange 2003 standard (windows 2003 member server) in the network and move half the mailboxes to its information store. this would be the cheapest route I think but I'm not sure how email would route to the 2 servers. How does it know which server the mailbox is sitting on and route email to the correct server? Also, how will BES work in this environment. If this can be done, it will be the best solution, but I'm just not sure if this will work...

Need your input 🙂
 
Exchange enterprise can be installed on any 2003 platform. The real concern is when you get into licensing, does each user have their own access license or do they get one from the server? Which ever way you go, I think per seat is easier, they need to match up.

If you guys are running out of hardrive space, then I would consider getting a seperate machine to handle Exchange Enterprise only. This current one with less than 6 GB can do AD and file sharing (like roaming profile junk and home directories) and the new machine can handle exchange functions only. The two aren't nessicarily always resource hogs, but I always have problems with combining mission critical machines together. If you have a problem with say a hard Drive or CPU, then you won't have a primary DC or your email. Not to mention, there are times when the AD is getting hit, like during replication, and the exchange is still serving all of it stuff. Then add a web remote user or someone searching for an old email and you got yourself a problem.

As far as using two exchange servers, sorry buddy. For some reason, Microsoft doesn't anticipate someone wanting to be a member of two different exchange servers at the same time. Why I have no idea, and hopefully they will change it. You can have the two exchange servers in the same domain, but the users can only connect to one at a time. In each one, they will see the others as an outside contact, not a fellow user. You can still do it, by making everyone's email address part of the contact lists, but when it comes to administering, you just doubled and in some cases, tripled your workload.

And we IT guys put a lot of effort into doing as little as possible.
 
the exchange AD is totally different from our users AD. So incase the mail server goes down, our users are still covered.

Also, you're saying even with exchange enterprise 2003 we can't have multiple mail servers exist in the same domain and access the same AD and exchange directory data? if so, that sucks 🙁
 
ok, this is weird...

we went through everyone's mailboxes and backed up, then deleted all their sent and deleted items. This showed that we were able to backup 1.5GB of data, hence, 1.5GB should've been cleared from the information store. However, when we check the database, it still shows 16GB!? 😕

can someone explain this? more importantly, how do we get rid of the deleted data?
 
A couple things:

To get the database to compress down, you'll have to run an offline defragmentation. Not always the safest thing in the world to do.

Exchange knows that there is only 1.5GB of data in there now, so no matter what the file size, you're not going to hit the wall again. It makes it kind of a pain since you can't just take a quick look at the file and see where you are.

If you do decide to go to Enterprise, an in place install works fine, I've done 4 of them, no problems with each. The other thing is that if you do it this way and decide to migrate later, you can migrate the whole thing to a new server, going the split server route on such a small system is really more trouble than it's worth, it's better to just get a bigger server or more drive space if you need to.

There is a lot of stuff you can do with Exchange Enterprise, as far as multiple storage groups/message stores/etc. but I would recommend against doing any of them unless you have a really good reason. I had a client that went to town and ended up making the thing super complicated, and then when it crashed it took me 3-4 times as long to fix it as it should have. Just try to keep everything as simple as possible.
 
I've set the retention dates to 0, this helped clear out all the deletions

but the store still show 16GB 🙁

is this safe? or am I still capped?
 
you can have multiple exchange servers in the same domain, no problem, and you make addresses available to all of them, but they are still considered be in an outside OU. So you can do it to have each exchange do its own thing, but when it comes time for you do administer them, you will still have to treat each one like it is is own seperate server.

So you might be making their lives easier, but your much more complicated.

I also would agree with mystic. Keep everything as simple as you can.
 
Did you use ESEUTIL to defrag the database?

How fast did it reach 16GB??!

Enterprise allows unlimited but if growth is exponential that is more concern.

Cheers!
 
Your database showing 16gb is normal. Exchange doesn't reclaim the space unless you do an offline defrag of the database which is not really recommended as it can be risky.

Originally posted by: FreshPrince
the exchange AD is totally different from our users AD. So incase the mail server goes down, our users are still covered.

Also, you're saying even with exchange enterprise 2003 we can't have multiple mail servers exist in the same domain and access the same AD and exchange directory data? if so, that sucks 🙁
Click to expand...

You can have two different exchange servers in the same domain and they will function side by side without any problem. Nothing will be seen as outside mail between the two servers. In fact this is often the preferred way of migrating from older versions of exchange or as in situations like yours to a newer, more powerful exchange server. As long as they are part of the same site, exchange will automatically redirect users to the correct exchange server and route mail accordingly.


Edit: However; AFAIK Having two exchange servers will still limit the overall database size to 16GB with the standard edition of exchange. You will have to convert BOTH exchange servers to Enterprise edition.

I've had to do this several times PM me for details.
 
I just recently ran into this problem as well. It's not fun and I feel your pain.

Another member of this forum helped me out quite a bit and pointed me in the right direction on some things.

Here's a couple options -

Are there any employees you can dump to PST folders? Part time employees or regular 9-5 employees that are pretty static (Receptionists, AP clerks, ect)? Offloading to PST files on the server where they can still be backed up will reduce the burden from the Exchange DB.

Another option is to encourage more use of the Public folders. The public folder is it's own 16 gb database that you can offload attachments to. You can set up security on it so that only certain people can access the folders within it.

You can also use exmerge to archive older items in your user's mailboxes and dump them to PST for later use if they need to reach it.

Then there's the usual lockdowns on account sizes, deleted items retention, attachment size blocking, ect.
 
I applied the item deletion retention to 0 last week and so far, out store went down 7GBs!

the db itself is still 16GB, but I don't want to risk the offline defrag.

we got the budget to get a new exchange server with enterprise, so we're going that route.

However, I still may need help with the migration to a new server. What's the best practice in doing this?

we have about 100 users and 15 remote users...I'd like to do this as seemless as possible.

thx.
 
One way could be to bring your new Exchange Enterprise server up in the same organization and then re-home your email accounts to the new server.

We did something similar though it was a migration from Exchange 2000 to a clustered Exchange Enterprise environment.
 
will there be a problem with frontend being standard and the new server being enterprise?

or, does the frontend need to be enterprise as well?
 
The front end server can be either version but the back end must be enterprise edition. Click here

Originally posted by: dphantom
One way could be to bring your new Exchange Enterprise server up in the same organization and then re-home your email accounts to the new server.
Click to expand...

Thats how we did it as well. Its fairly simple and doesn't involve a lot of risk. Its also transparent to the users. If you decide to remove the old server make sure everything is re-homed to the new server. Address books, public folders etc.
 
Pay special attention to address books and public folders. For us, most moved over fine, but I did have to manually repoint a few. We also left the old Exchange box up for awhile after we had moved everything over just to ensure our users hadn't lost anything.
 
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