((MXECHO))

It is rather common for people to experience problems after their mailbox has been moved between Exchange Servers. This is usually due to something else playing a part in the move, for example maybe Anti_Virus on the server has not been configured properly (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823166 and http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Properly-Configure-file-system-antivirus-Exchange.html) or maybe something else is hooked into the mailbox when trying to move, 3rd party archiver or indexer…whatever. What can you do to help verify that your mailbox moves will go as planned? Well of course you can test on a small subset prior to your whole org, but you can also turn up diagnostic logging on the Exchange Server to get more information about the mailbox moves during the move, so should something go wrong you can go back and review.

In Exchange 2003 – Navigate in Exchange System Manager to the Exchange Server, right-click and choose Properties, open the Diagnostic Logging tab and choose MSExchangeIS\System\Move Mailbox – turn this up to Maximum. This will generate a lot of events in the application log on your server (so be mindful of space) but will also give you much more information about how the procedure went and if there were any errors in the process.

In Exchange 2007 you will use the Management Shell

set-eventloglevel –id “MSExchangeIS\9002 System\Move Mailbox” –level expert

and to turn it back down

set-eventloglevel –id “MSExchangeIS\9002 System\Move Mailbox” –level lowest

Hope this helps in troubleshooting Move Mailbox operations.

If you ever find your self in a position where you need to run a hard repair against an Exchange database, it is important you understand the entire procedure. First I should say that running the /p against your database should never be your first choice, it is always your last resort. You have no backup, and no other options.

So here is your procedure

1. eseutil /p <path to edb>
   1. this process will take a long time, usually deleting the unicode table takes the longest and you should be careful not to click in the black command prompt window, this can pause eseutil. If you do pause, you can resume by clicking the top cmd promt title bar and pressing F5. This procedure will take a while.
   2. this process deletes data that is corrupt or incomplete so the database can be brought back to a consistent state.
2. eseutil /d <path to edb>
   1. this process will defrag the repaired database and must be run after the /p.
   2. you must have at least 110% free space, relative to the database size in order to run this command. You can redirect to another temp location using the /t switch (eseutil /d <full path to edb> /tX:\tempdfg.edb)
   3. again do not click the command prompt screen, it may pause eseutil
3. isinteg –fix <servername> –test alltests
   1. Before you can run isinteg –fix you will have to mount and dismount the database. To do this,
      1. move all logs from the original storage group location, stop smtp so no new mail is delivered to the database, mount the DB and then dismount, you can then restart SMTP.
   2. isinteg will create a log file named isinteg.pri, check this log when finished, at the bottom of the log you will see how many errors and fixes were encountered. Run this test until you see 0 errors and 0 fixes. You may need to run this 2 or 3 times.

Once you have run EACH of the steps above you can then mount your Database and allow your clients to connect. Each is very important to the stability of your database in the future. It is even recommended that you eventually move all your mailboxes from this database to a new database in the future.

The process of using eseutil /p can get you out of a bad situation but it is never something you want to use unless you are out of options. This will take a LONG time and you will lose data from your DB.

recap – process is

eseutil /p

eseutil /d

mount / dismount

isinteg –fix –s <servername> –test alltests

If you have ever wanted to have a look at the Performance of your Exchange Server, any version, then this is the post for you

Using PerfWiz you can easily configure a Performance Monitor counter to take a snapshot of your server over a given period of time, the best part is it uses a wizard to capture the counters that mean the most to a Windows Server/Exchange Server so you do not have to be a PerfMon genius. Then using the PAL tool you can analyze the .blg file that the PefWiz counter creates and get a nice report with graphs to review and diagnose or build baselines of your Exchange Server. The report even explains what the counters mean and what you should be looking for. You install the PerfWiz on your Exchange Server (quick and easy install, no reboot required) and PAL on any workstation, there are some pre-reqs for the PAL tool so make sure to read through them on the site below.

Keeping an eye on performance trends can be invaluable when trying to justify hardware upgrades or for better tuning of your servers. I am sure you will find this tool combination useful.

PerfWiz - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=31FCCD98-C3A1-4644-9622-FAA046D69214&displaylang=en

PerfWiz - (Exchange 2007) - http://blogs.technet.com/mikelag/archive/2008/05/02/perfwiz-replacement-for-exchange-2007.aspx

PAL - http://pal.codeplex.com/

(note: there are other possible fixes to this error

Before I explain the difference before the clean and dirty states of an Exchange database we should explain how

Mail store will not mount, in Exchange System Manager you see an Internal Processing error with error ID c1041724. You also notice an error in the application log, 9518 with error code 0xfffffddc.

How do you find out what is wrong?

First, you need to make sense of the error codes. If you have not used err.exe before, this is a perfect time to become familiar. Download this tool from Microsoft

There are many times when I need to bring up a database from another organization in my lab quickly. The legacydn.exe tool is a quick and easy way to change the Exchange Organization Name, Admin Group Name, or change legacyExchangeDN values with a GUI. This will be a quick post on how this tool can be used to help you mount foreign databases in your lab.

You can download the legacydn.exe tool from Microsoft