[ExchangeList] Re: Mailbox issue - Outlook 2007

Thanks guys. the only thing i failed to add was our Exchanger server is on 
VMware VM, saying that though, it is not a massive infrastructure with about 
100 users, but only 25 active accounts.

The Pc is question is a about 3months old and almost cost what a mid class 
server would in todays terms, so it is no small box.




________________________________
From: Jabber Wock <jabberwock99@xxxxxxxxx>
To: exchangelist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, June 3, 2009 3:00:54 PM
Subject: [ExchangeList] Re: Mailbox issue - Outlook 2007


Hi,

We had a similar situation with Ex2k3 and Outlook 2007 SP2 a while back when 
several users on one storage group had mailboxes of 2G,3G,5G and even larger.  
Users were constantly freezing, even when simply scroling from one email to 
another, and often had to bomb out of Outlook (crash and restart Outlook 2007 
yuk!).  We spent a lot of time on it.  We ran the Windows performance monitor 
tool and other tools.  In the end we found:

a) Make sure that there is no mailbox folder with more than 4000 items in it.  
If there is, archive that folder to sub-folders, or better yet, to an 
off-server PST file if feasible.  Once any Outlook folder gets over 4000 items, 
the mailbox will "thrash" because it will perform multiple disk accesses every 
time.  Outlook prefetches up to around 5000 items.  If more than 5000 then the 
prefetch is done multiple times, for each 5000 item block.  This is done on 
EVERY access.  So keeping the item count in any folder under 4000 is good.  
This goes for EVERY folder including deleted items, archived items, etc.

b) Check the disk for hardware issues.  Try replacing the disk(s) with newer 
faster disks if possible.  Even SATA drives are faster now than say 1-2 year 
old drives.  Check performance with disk performance tools like HDTune or any 
tool of your choice.

c) Check your disk spindle architecture, relative to where the mailbox db 
files, streaming files, transaction log files and SMTP log files are stored.  
Ideally they should all be on separate spindles.  This is often not feasible or 
practical.  At least the DB and transaction log files MUST be on different 
spindles.  Note:  just because they are on different Windows volumes like E:, 
F: does not mean they are on separate spindles.  Check the underlying RAID and 
disk array configurations to identify what is on which physical spindle.

In our case we found a disk hardware problem as well as spindle related 
performance issues.  We ended up moving the mailboxes to a brand new Exchange 
2003 server and the performance has been flawless ever since.

HTH!

JW


On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 5:50 AM, Patrick <london31uk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Guys,

just need to get some clarity on this. We have a user whos mailbox if over 4GB, 
and she keepe getting locks and freezes. We have suggested to her that she 
archive her stuff, but my question is should this be happening? What is the 
maximum size a mailbox can be before you start encountering performance issues 
such as this



Exchange 2003
Windows 2003
outlook 2007


thanks

patrick

Other related posts: