GOexchange?
Interesting tool, sounds like Lucid8 has created a wrapper around eseutil and isinteg — both of which I recommend against. There are some interesting statements in their FAQs, I’ve linked the one that I find the most laughable below. Running eseutil /d is not exactly the most difficult task on the planet…
Has anyone ever used these tools before?
Using Microsoft tools, it is possible to create a manual Exchange Server maintenance process yourself, however, keep in mind that this requires in-depth study of the MS tools and exhaustive testing. More importantly, when manually executed the maintenance process is often incomplete and/or executed improperly which can cause data destruction with devastating results that cuts across the entire organization. To create a manual process you would need to do the following;
via Automated Microsoft Exchange maintenance, repair & recovery from GOexchange.
What tools do you recommend if not esutil and isinteg?
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None actually. If you end up using eseutil you might as well move your mailboxes to a new database so why not start out that way? If you’re truly worried about white space;
1) Create new database
2) Move mailboxes to new database
3) Delete old database
It’s about the same amount of actual admin time involved as eseutil /d, less user impact and you’re not manipulating the underlying structure of the database.
As for isinteg — I’ve seen careers ended over that. Most people don’t know that it doesn’t care about actually reconciling messages or anything of that nature. If it finds something out of the ordinary it deletes it. :) I’ve seen it delete pointers to top level folders in C*O mailboxes, essentially rendering the sub folders and all content in them ‘deleted’ as far as the end user is concerned. Isinteg should *only* be used on a copy of the database while PSS is on the phone with you. It’s definitely one of those tools that can end your career quite spectacularly…
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That’s good to know about isinteg. Thank you very much.
With esutil and creating a new db instead of running the utility, will this work for SBS/Exchange Standard 2003? How would I accomplish this or would I need to exmerge everyone, take the db off line, create a new db, and then exmerge the data back into the db? That sounds like much more work than it needs to be.
Curtis
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Ouch. Yeah, that sucks. Doesn’t sound like you have much of a choice.
The question to ask before you run a /d is why are you doing it? Are you running out of storage? Are you nearing the db size limit?
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A little bit of both. Not really hard drive space but backup space on the current tape solution. I did a partial restore for a client and it grew from 18 to 25 Gb and now I’m needing getting too close for comfort on the tape solution. They will be upgrading to SBS2008 in the near future so I’ll then have time to address the backup issue but I’m curious what other options I have for other clients.
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Sheerly out of curiosity, what type of tape are you running that 25GB is pushing the limits?
Backup limitations can be solved by moving away from tape to either disk or cloud based backup. Ping me at jeremyp
As for what to do with SBS 2003, I really can’t think of any other options unfortunately.
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