SysAdmin Talk

I often find that I need to list Exchange databases on a particular server by database size. Exchange 2007 doesn’t provide a mechanism to get this data directly from the management console or shell, but it’s reasonably easy to use the Exchange Management Shell to run a command which will give the answer.

The first thing to do is get a list of databases which we are interested in – it could be a list of databases on a particular server or databases which match a particular name pattern.

One of the questions I get on a regular basis is how to move the database file and the log files to a different location.

First of all, it is a best practice to change the database and log files location. By default they are configured to use c:\program files\microsoft\exchange server\mailbox\first storage group (in Exchange Server 2007). Change this to a separate physical disk, and if possible two separate physical disks, one for the database file and one for the log files. If one of these two disks fails you have a much better recovery scenario then when the database and the log files are located on one physical disk. Also from a performance point of view it’s better to use two separate physical disks.