How to Defragment with the Eseutil Utility Bill Long Support Professional Enterprise Messaging Suppo

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How to Defragment with the Eseutil UtilityBill
LongSupport ProfessionalEnterprise Messaging
SupportMicrosoft Corporation
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Overview

• What is offline defragmentation?
• Benefits of an offline defragmentation
• When should I defragment?
• Considerations and planning
• Running the defragmenting
• Common problems
• Questions

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What is Offline Defragmentation?

• Online defragmentation
• Part of nightly information store maintenance
• Does not reduce database size
• Offline defragmentation
• Database must be dismounted
• Builds a new database without any "white space"

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Benefits of Defragmentation

• Recovers disk space
• Verifies database integrity
• Corrects certain problems in older versions of
  Microsoft Exchange
• Orphaned long values (Q185271)
• Space tree fragmentation (Q230691)

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When Should I Defragment?

• Offline defragmentation is not a requirement it
  is optional
• The most benefit will be seen after
• Deleting data out of mailboxes or public folders
• Moving mailboxes to another store or server
• Allowing online defragmentation to complete

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Considerations and Planning

• Determining the amount of free space in the
  database
• Application event log entries (Q186291)
• Eseutil /ms ltdatabasegt (Q195914)
• Backups
• Always run a backup before using any utility on
  the database
• Test your backups!

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Considerations and Planning (2)

• Downtime
• The period of time the defragmentation takes will
  vary greatly depending on hardware
• The store will be unavailable to users during the
  defragmentation
• Free disk space
• You must have enough space for the temp files
  the typical recommendation is 110 percent of the
  size of the original databases
• Running the Eseutil utility on another computer
  (Q244525)

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Running an Offline Defragmentation

• Command-line options and syntax
• Typical use eseutil /d ltdatabasegt /tlttemp edbgt
• Optional parameters
• /s .stm file
• /t temporary .edb file
• /f temporary .stm file
• /i do not defragment the .stm
• /p do not instate the defragmented database

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Running an Offline Defragmentation (2)
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Running an Offline Defragmentation (3)
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Running an Offline Defragmentation (4)

• After the defragmentation
• If the /p parameter was used, the database must
  be instated manually
• Mount the store
• Run an online backup!

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What if an Error Occurs?

• Note the details of the error
• Check the application event log
• Query the Knowledge Base

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What if an Error Occurs? (2)

• Using Error.exe to interpret an ESE error code

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Common Problems

• Database not dismounted properly (-550)
• Try to mount the store and then dismount it
  cleanly before running the defragmentation
• Out of disk space (-1808)
• Make sure to specify a temporary file location
  with free disk space of at least 110 percent of
  the size of the database
• Corrupted long value (-1526)
• Q195856 discusses using the Eseutil utility to
  remove corrupted long values

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Common Problems (2)

• File system or network problem with the temporary
  file (typically -1022)
• If the defragmentation did not complete, you can
  start the defragmentation over again because the
  original database is still intact
• Copying a temporary file over the old database
  fails or is aborted by user
• In this case, the temporary file is intact, but
  the original database is not
• Copy the temporary file manually and rename it

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