Recipe 6.10. Determining How Much Whitespace Is in a DatabaseProblemYou wish to determine how much available "whitespace" exists within a given database. SolutionUsing a graphical user interface
Using a command-line interface
DiscussionMany administrators are keen to understand how much whitespace is contained in their Exchange databases. This space includes database pages that were once allocated but have been freed. In most cases, an EDB/STM file pair will grow steadily over time, but if you've done something to shrink the actual amount of mail data in the file pair (such as moving mailboxes to another server or purging old mail), there may be a substantial amount of disk space allocated to the file but unused by Exchange. The amount of whitespace is especially important to know in Exchange Server Standard Edition when the database size is approaching the 16 GB limit. Unfortunately, there is no built-in utility to determine the amount of whitespace, so the simplest way to find this information is simply to look in the Application Event Viewer logs for event 1221, an informational event that is logged each night after scheduled online maintenance. Here's a sample from one of our servers: Event Type: Information Event Source: MSExchangeIS Public Store Event Category: General Event ID: 1221 Date: 1/4/2005 Time: 3:15:00 AM User: N/A Computer:BATMAN Description: The database "First Storage Group\Public Folder Store (BATMAN)" has 1 megabytes of free space after online defragmentation has terminated. If you run the command-line recipe, you will notice that it's not always the same number as that reported with event 1221; eseutil.exe provides a more accurate estimate (at the cost of having to dismount your database). See AlsoRecipe 6.16 for defragmenting the database, and MS KB 186291 (XADM: Cannot Determine Free Space Available in Exchange Database) |