This tip was submitted to the SearchWin2000.com tip exchange by member Robert Shahon. Please let other users know how useful it is by rating it below.
You may have found yourself in a situation that many Exchange admins have come up against: low disk space on your Exchange drive. Sometimes the planning does not necessarily fit the result of a few years of usage -- especially when the upper management insists on using Exchange as its filing cabinet. When this happens, you need to add a larger disk to your Exchange server to accomodate the database size.
Since Exchange 2000 Server does not come with the the Performance Optimizer program (Perfwiz.exe) that is included with previous versions of Exchange, this tip explains how to move log files or database files in Exchange 2000 from one disk to another.
If you want to move log files or database files to another drive, use the following procedures.
To move log files:
- Start Exchange System Manager.
- Locate the Administrative Group.
- Open the properties on the Storage Group for which you want to change log file paths.
- On the General tab, change the Transaction Log Location by clicking Browse, and then specifying a new drive or directory location for the log files.
To move databases:
- Start Exchange System Manager.
- Locate the Administrative Group.
- Under the Storage Group, click the Mailbox or Public Folder Store that you want to change.
- Open the properties on that store, and click the Database tab.
- Choose a new location for the databases by clicking Browse and specifying a new drive or directory location for the database files.
With the databases, you can choose to move the Exchange database (.edb file), Exchange streaming database (.stm file) or both. If the databases are still mounted, you will receive the following message:
You are about to perform the following operation(s): -change Exchange database location. To perform the requested operation(s), the store must be temporarily dismounted which will make it inaccessible to any user. Do you want to continue?
- Click Yes to dismount the database automatically and move the location.
- When you finish moving the databases, remount the databases manually.
- You can move the log files and database files to any directory that you want to create. When you move logs and database files, you may want to create the ExchsrvrMdbdata file structure for consistency reasons, but you are not required to do so.
- You must grant the following default permissions to the new Mdbdata directory that contains the log files and database files:
Administrators: Full Control
Authenticated Users: Read and Execute, List Folder Contents, Read
Creator Owner: None
Server Operators: Modify, Read and Execute, List Folder Contents, Read, Write
System: Full Control
You may also need to grant the following permissions to the root drive that contains the new Mdbdata directory: System: Full Control.
During the process of moving log files and database files, your store is temporarily dismounted, which makes it inaccessible to your users until the process is completed.
Moving log files or database files invalidates all existing incremental and differential backups, so I recommend that you make a full backup after these changes.
Note: In the compiliation of this tip, I referred to Microsoft Knowledge Base article 270693 and permissions info I received from a Microsoft support person on the Exchange newsgroup. All other information is based on my own experience.
