SysAdmin Talk

With the new online Move-Mailbox functionality in Exchange Server 2010, invoked by calling the New-MoveRequest cmdlet, the time a mailbox is offline has been reduced to only seconds, and as such the end-user experience has been greatly improved.

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.