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I'm a bit of an Exchange admin noob so I don't know if this is normal, but on our Exchange 2007 server under C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Mailbox\First Storage Group\ there are 30,000 1MB .log files. I don't know if those should be there or not, but they keep multiplying like little jackrabbits. I've so far resisted deleting them as I'm sure something would break, but it's come to the point now where our 80GB disk is completely full up and Exchange has stopped receiving messages.

My best guess is that these are transaction logs and would be useful in rebuilding the database should something go awry, but 30GB of transaction logging seems a bit excessive. Is there a way to limit it or is that even a good idea?

And of course did I completely miss the point?

maik
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3 Answers3

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Those logs are transaction files. Do not delete them.

I'm curious here, did you install this Exchange server on your own? Placing the storage group on the same disk volume as your OS, swap file etc is absolutely not the recommended configuration for Exchange server.

You should ASAP add more storage to your server, and place the Exchange storage on it.

Please read the following article: Exchange log disk is full, Prevention and Remedies

pauska
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  • I did indeed do that. I'm a private contractor and this is my first time using Exchange 2007. We have one server running ESXi with 4 VMs including the Exchange Server. It sounds like I should have created at least a separate partition for the log disk when I set it up. I'll give that article a read, thanks. – maik Nov 16 '09 at 18:38
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    In addition, you are either not backing up Exchange or they are not working correctly. I certainly hope this is not a production server. – Doug Luxem Nov 16 '09 at 18:54
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    Not too sound too elitist here maik, but please consider taking a course - even better a certification before rolling out Exchange server to customers. It's not the easiest software to manage, especially not when it's set up incorrectly. – pauska Nov 16 '09 at 19:54
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    I'll go ahead and sound elitist for you. Being that I make my living as a private IT contractor, I don't much like it when I hear about other contractors hurting the images of those of us who know what we're doing. You need to understand how the database engine works before you go deploying a product like Exchange into production, and you don't, obviously. You've also tipped your hand that you don't have you Customer's email data in a good backup scheme, since you wouldn't have had this problem if you did. I clean up after people like you. Hopefully your Customer won't lose data. – Evan Anderson Nov 16 '09 at 22:02
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The transaction logs should be cleared when you perform a full backup of the relevant database under normal operational conditions. When last did you perform a successful backup?

http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Transaction-Logs-Lifeblood-Exchange.html

ThatGraemeGuy
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What was needed wasn't just a backup of the server's OS volume or Exchange stores, but an Exchange-aware backup. From what I've read this functionality was only recently added natively to Exchange 07 (starting with SP2). The built-in Windows Server Backup tool can now officially make Exchange-aware backups and as soon as I configured that I magically had 30GB extra of free space. From what some people have said I agree that Exchange is a beast of a monstrosity not to be taken lightly and I clearly don't know as much as I should in administering it so I'll be looking for some training or at the very least some reading material. If anyone has some good suggestions (pauska? Evan?), feel free to comment.

maik
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