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My E2010 database is 435GB, and we are running out of disk space on the database LUN and I'm looking for ways to reclaim this space in an efficient manner.

Right now I'm moving mailboxes, but I don't think (in SP2) the space is reclaimed until a full backup is done.

To save time, I'm thinking of reducing the duration deleted items are retained, disabling indexing of data, and possibly compacting the database when everything is done (online maintenance, etc)

What is the effect of disabling the index on a live E2010 database? Will outlook automatically perform searches locally?

makerofthings7
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  • How often do you take full backups? – ewwhite Feb 07 '13 at 14:46
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    As far as I know, things haven't changed in Exchange 2010 in regards to the physical database file. It doesn't matter how much data you remove from the mailbox database, the physical file size will remain unchanged until and unless you perform an offline defrag. An alternative would be to move the mailboxes in this mailbox database to a new mailbox database and then delete this one. – joeqwerty Feb 07 '13 at 14:46
  • @ewwhite Weekly, so one should run tomorrow, but I have an issue with the DAG that is preventing backup: http://serverfault.com/q/475833/51457 – makerofthings7 Feb 07 '13 at 15:05

1 Answers1

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Physical database size will remain the same but white space will be reclaimed, shown in the early am clean up event application logs. That would prevent the physical database from growing any larger in theory.

I've disabled the index before in this same situation (for a few days). The only thing I recall users experiencing is that they get a message during a search saying in Outlook that not all results might be shown if I remember correctly and I believe OWA is affected (not able to do full index searches).

I followed this article online last year when I did it: http://cosonok.blogspot.com/2011/01/exchange-20072010-get-out-of-jail-quick.html

and here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995966%28EXCHG.80%29.aspx

TheCleaner
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