RE: MDBData Logs

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From: dirkbuntinx (dirkbuntinx_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 10/28/04 

Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 05:15:02 -0700

I'm reading this thread, and although the advise to use an Exchange aware
backup tool is correct, this does not fix your problem ...

What you can do, is dump the headers of the exchange databases of your
server (through eseutil) and simply delete al the transactionlogs which have
already been commited ...

A wise man would backup everyting beforehand :-)

How it works (for Exchange 2000):

-Shutdown the exchange services, and use eseutil to check if the databases
are shutdown correctly by running the following command (run against both
.edb and .stm)

C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\BIN>eseutil /mh H:\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb |
find /
i "Shutdown"
            State: Clean Shutdown

If you get a clean shutdown, proceed by identifying the transactionlogs that
are commited:

C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\BIN>eseutil /mh H:\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb |
find /
i "consistent"
  Last Consistent: (0xD3C7,2B,E9) 08/01/2004 16:27:11

Here you will see that the last transaction the server has committed is
located in the transactionlog file which is (or will be) called
"E000D3C7.log" (in the understanding that the log prefic for this database is
E00 ;-)

Verify if that the checkpoint also points the same transaction log
C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\BIN>eseutil /mk E:\Exchsrvr\MDBLOG\E00.chk |find
/i "c
heckpoint"
      Checkpoint file: E:\Exchsrvr\MDBLOG\E00.chk
      LastFullBackupCheckpoint: (0x0,0,0)
      Checkpoint: (0xD3C7,48,18)

If this match, check if the log file "E000D3C7.log" exists, if it doesn't,
don't panic yet, most likely (it schould be the case when a clean shutdown is
performed) this is actually the working log "E00.log" which will be renamed
to "E000D3C7.log" when it is full .... to verify this, run :

C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\BIN>eseutil /ml E:\Exchsrvr\MDBLOG\E00.log |find
/i "l
generation"
      lGeneration: 54215 (0xD3C7)

Here you see that the name of the E00.log will become "E000D3C7.log" ...

This means, you can safely remove all the transaction logs (except the
E00.log) because all these logs have been commited successfully to the
database ...

NOTE: if you have multiple databases (like I do), the procedure needs to be
run againts all databases on a per "Storage Group" level ..... this is off
course because transaction logs are common between all databases in one
Storage Group ....

Hope this will help you out a bit ......

Greetz ....

Dirk

"UMAS1" wrote:

> My MDBData log files are still there since the day we moved to Exchange 2003
> and is beginning to take up a lot of hard drive space can I delete some of
> these files.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Very Small Setup: Backups and Log Files
    ... offline for the time it would take to do a "non Exchange aware" backup:). ... Besides the size of my organization I also have Exchange ... and thanks for the lead to eseutil to confirm clean shutdown. ... Remount the databases ...
    (microsoft.public.exchange.admin)
  • Re: MDBData Logs
    ... He does an Exchange aware backup ... This process can be used to dump the logs, but it would be a heck of a lot ... and use eseutil to check if the databases ... > Here you will see that the last transaction the server has committed is ...
    (microsoft.public.exchange.admin)
  • RE: Need to restore MBDATA in SBS 2003 after drive crash
    ... Before we move the log files and databases, ... exchange server has the same organization, ... |> Note If Administrative Groups does not appear, it may not be turned on. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: Session ending shutdown problem
    ... massively long shutdown time, you will have to rethink what it means to "shut down". ... and start routing everything to it instead of the databases. ... this process starts gets appended to the transaction file instead. ... Of course I can detect the QueryEndSession and EndSession messages. ...
    (microsoft.public.vc.mfc)
  • Re: Why is database integrity so impopular ?
    ... When time comes to build transactional databases (as opposed to data ... normalizing data with high integrity mechanisms. ... What is wrong with modern DB design approaches? ... declarative model of some version of transaction interests me though ...
    (comp.databases.theory)