Recently I was involved in trying to diagnose a problem with an Exchange 5.5 server. All Outlook users were unable to read mail or access the global address listing. Performance checks showed that operation of the Exchange server was slow, but Task Manager showed no reason for the decreased performance. A server reboot took a very long time but once the reboot was over, and the Exchange server restarted, everything worked fine. Then, when Exchange services were loaded, some mail that was sent to everyone a few weeks ago again appeared in users' mailboxes. Here's what I did to resolve the problem:
- First, I removed all mailboxes that were no longer needed. Mailboxes take up disk space, especially if they are on distribution lists that have frequent mail sent to the list. More disk space used means slower performance.
- Then, I got rid of distribution lists that are no longer being used. This is especially important when these lists are included in the "All Staff" distribution list, because, again, this will take up lots of space and will require operational resources when mail is sent to "All staff." In this case there were a number of distribution lists that contained mailboxes that were no longer being used.
In this case that solved the problem. But there are also some administrative procedures that you can apply:
- Periodically monitor the Inbound and Outbound queues in the Internet Mail Connector to check for any stuck messages.
- Periodically monitor your Event logs to look for unusual happenings that could indicate trouble.
- After you remove mailboxes, especially those that contained a whole lot of mail, do an offline defrag of the databases.
Adesh Rampat has 10 years experience with network and IT administration. He is a member of the Association Of Internet Professionals, the Institute For Network Professionals, and the International Webmasters Association. He has also lectured extensively on a variety of topics.
