[ExchangeList] Re: relocating storage location
- From: "Rick Boza" <rickb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <exchangelist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2006 11:25:57 -0400
OK, so now things clarify. You did exactly what George had speculated.
to answer your question, there's a great reason to have your transaction
logs on a different spindle (not just a drive). Besides being a best
practice, the reason is for recovery purposes - the logs contain all
your data since your last backup. In the event of a drive failure where
you lost your databases, with your last backup and transaction logs you
get back to where you were when the drive failure happened.
There are also potential performance reasons, but the number one reason
is recovery purposes.
Thanks for clarifying - your original description left me trying to
figure out what had happened, cause we just had a discussion on this
about two weeks ago on this list.
From: exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jabber Wock
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 11:08 AM
To: exchangelist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ExchangeList] Re: relocating storage location
Hi Rick,
Thanks for your detailed answer. Sorry if my terminology is confusing,
I will try to be precise. Here is my answer to your questions:
1. I wanted to move one of my Storage Groups (and everything contained
therein, i.e. the all the associated database files) from one drive to
another, on an Exchange 2003 Enterprise server. So ...
2. In ESM, I went to the properties of the Storage Group and changed
the "Transaction Log Location" and the "System Path Location" to the new
chosen location on the new drive (having first created the blank folders
of course).
3. As a result, I saw messages which went through the process of
dismounting the store, moving "something", and remounting the store, and
then a "success" message. It went by too quickly, a few seconds. My
EDB and STM files were about 7GB in size total. When I checked I saw
that the small 5M transaction log files had moved, and that was it. The
EDB and STM files had not moved.
4. So eventually after poking around, I saw that the properties for the
Mailbox Store (not the storage group) were still showing the old
location in the Database tab. So I changed the locations for the
"Exchange Database" and "Exchange Streaming Database" to the new
locations, in the Database tab in the Properties for the Mailbox Store,
and that's when the mpve happened. All went well, as I explained.
5. So that left me with a question: when does it make sense to have
the Storage Group pointing to one place, and the Mailbox Store EDB and
STM files pointing to another? And for that matter, what exactly is the
"Storage Group" if not the collection of Mailbox Stores and Public
Folders i.e. database files? And I guess the answer is" The Storage
Group defines where the TRANSACTION LOGS are kept (I still have not
figured out what the "System Path Location" does) and the "Mailbox
Store" defines where the EDB and STM files are kept, and changing the
Storage Group location does not affect the Mailbox Store location.
Hope that helped explain what I was asking about.
Best regards
JW
On 10/9/06, Rick Boza <rickb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote:
Wait, maybe I am reading something incorrectly here, but what I read
before is you went to the database properties and changed the location,
and it didn't correctly dismount, move, and remount the databases.
Then you went to the mailbox properties and changed the DATABASE
location?
Where did you seet his setting precisely?
I think you're mis-stating things a bit. I'll run through how this is
supposed to work, maybe you can confirm or deny some of this in your
environment.
to move the database(s) you go to the properties of the mailbox STORE
and change the location using the 'browse' feature typically. Exchange
then dismounts, moves, and remounts the DB store. The files themselves
are copied to the new location, then deleted from the old location once
the remount is done. (I think, could be slightly off on the timing
there).
If your mailbox was IN that store, it was moved.
If your mailbox was in a different store, well, it wasn't moved unless
you go into DSA.MSC and use the move mailbox wizrd - moving it to the
new store (presumably in the new location, as above) would then move all
the data (well again, copy the data, then flag for delete in the old
store). What you would THEN see is the new store would grow by the size
of the mailbox, and the old store would be the same side, albeit with
significantly more white space in the file.
In summary: You should NEVER have to 'move' a user mailbox to move a
store. You should NEVER have to manually move and delete store database
files to effect a database move.
If you did what you're saying (some of which admittedly I'm not sure you
really CAN do), I suspect you have a problem that you may not know
about.
Rick
From: exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Moffat
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 9:31 AM
To: exchangelist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ExchangeList] Re: relocating storage location
Basic Exchange Admin stuff. If you don't know you should really rtfm...
S
From: exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jabber Wock
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 10:12 AM
To: exchangelist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ExchangeList] Re: relocating storage location
Hi,
I did finally get it to work, and made an interesting discovery which
left me scratching my head a little.
I had gone into the properties of the STORE (not the Mailbox) and
changed the location. As I stated, that went by too fast and claimed to
have completed successfully but nothing actually was moved.
So I poked around and poked around, and then I noticed that the
properties on the MAILBOX itself (not the store) were still displaying
the old locations (!). So, I changed these manually. Sure enough, this
did start the automatic mailbox migration I had been expecting, and it
took about 40 minutes to move 7GB but all went well, and at the end of
this process the EDB and STM files magically appeared in the new
location and disappeared from the old location. Everything checked out
OK and was running normally.
So what has me still scratchibng my head is: why is it necessary to
move the Store *AND* the Mailbox individually? Indeed, what does it
mean exactly, to have the Store in one location but the Mailbox in
another? If the system allows for these two entities to be specified
independently, this implies that it is meaningful to have the "Store"
on, say, drive P and the "mailboxes" on some pther drive, say "Q". If
so, what would there be on drive P? Not the transaction logs nor the
SMTP logs, because those are specified independently too. So what is
the point of specifying the location for the store locations
independently of the mailbox locations?
If anyone has come across a situation where this level of separation is
meaningful, I would love to hear it, just so I might learn something.
TIA
JW
On 10/9/06, Rick Boza <rickb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Actually it should do the move automatically - you have some other
problem going on there.
From: exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Evan Mann
Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2006 8:24 PM
To: exchangelist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ExchangeList] Re: relocating storage location
I don't think ESM moves them for you. Every time I've moved a store I
dismounted them, manually moved the files, and remounted using the new
locations.
________________________________
From: exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:exchangelist-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jabber Wock
Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2006 7:58 AM
To: [ExchangeList]
Subject: [ExchangeList] relocating storage location
Hi all,
On a Exchange 2003 server, I am trying to move one Storage Area from one
drive to another. So I went into the ESM, properties of the Storage
Area, and changed the location from the old drive to the new drive
(having created the necessary empty folder tree on the new drive where I
wanted the storage storage database files to be moved to. The DB files
are about 4G and 2G in size (EDB and STM).
As expected, I got a message that the database will be dismounted, is it
OK? I said OK. The database got dismounted in a few seconds, then got
remounted a few seconds later, with a "success" message. So far so
good. In fact, too good, since I expected a 7GB move to take more that
2-3 seconds!
Sure enough, on checking, the DB files are still in the old location.
The new drive is not showing any EDB or STM files but there is a tiny
tmp.edb file there. However the ESM is showing all the mailboxes, and
as far as I can tell, all users are also able to see all their mailboxes
as before, no issues.
So when do the database files get physically moved? or did I jave to
physically move them myself??!!
TIA and Best regards
JW
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