MSExchange.org Monthly Newsletter of January 2009 Sponsored by: Red Gate

Welcome to the MSExchange.org newsletter by Henrik Walther, Exchange MVP, MCA: Messaging (Exchange Ranger) Apprentice, MCTS Windows Server 2008, MCITP Exchange 2007, MCSE 2003 Messaging/Security. Each month we will bring you interesting and helpful information on Exchange Server. We want to know what all *you* are interested in hearing about. Please send your suggestions for future newsletter content to: henrik@msexchange.org

1. Copying Large Exchange Databases in the most efficient way

Welcome to the January issue of the MSE newsletter, the very first MSE newsletter published in 2009. I hope all of you had a great holiday as well as a great start to the New Year. Hopefully most of you have not been personally affected by the financial crisis that seems to really have struck the world these last couple of months and unfortunately probably several more months to come!

As an Exchange administrator/consultant in a large corporate enterprise hosting thousands of user mailboxes totaling in terabytes of data in an Exchange (2007) based messaging environment, I am sure you are sometimes faced with the task of copying large Exchange databases files (EDB files) between the logical unit numbers (LUNs) on the storage area network (SAN) and/or the volumes on a Direct Attached Storage (DAS). With the true database portability we have in Exchange 2007, you may even end up in a situation where you have to copy one or more EDB files between LUNs or DAS volumes connected to different Exchange 2007 Mailbox servers.

If you answered yes to the above, may I ask how you copied the EDB files from one location to another? Depending on whether the Exchange 2007 Mailbox servers in your organization are standalone servers or clustered servers, these EDB files may be up to 100GB or 200GB respectively, so it is typically important this is done as quickly as possible.

If you are using Windows Explorer to copy them from one location to another, the task can take several hours. So hopefully not many of you use Windows Explorer right? No of course not, we learned many years ago that if you want to copy files from one location to another in the most efficient manner, then you should use a tool such as Robocopy or Xcopy. Agreed that using one of these tools is definitely faster than copying large files via Windows Explorer, but did you know there is another free tool that is considerably faster? In addition, did you know this tool is installed on all Exchange Servers by default?

What the heck is he talking about? I hear some of you grumble. I am talking about Eseutil.exe! Eseutil.exe has a built in feature, which was created specifically for copying large EDB files from one location to another. Ok, but since we are speaking Eseutil.exe, is not the procedure rather complex? No actually it is extremely simple; you just have to run Eseutil with the /y and /d switches as shown below:

ESEUTIL /y [source] /d [destination]

Figure 1: Copying an EDB file from one location to another using Eseutil.exe

Yes that’s it, it is that simple!

So what kind of improvements can I expect by using Eseutil.exe over the other tools? Well, tests I have performed resulted in a 300GB EDB file (do not ask me why I have a database this size!) that took approximately 3 hours to copy from one LUN to another on the same Mailbox server using Windows Explorer. In contrast, copying the same file using Eseutil.exe took approximately 45 minutes (more precisely 2603.78 seconds as shown in Figure 2). Talk about an improvement!

Figure 2: Copying a 300GB EDB file from one LUN to another in 2603.78 seconds!

The SAN on which the tests were performed was a state of the art (EMC Symmetrix).

So why is Eseutil.exe so much faster than Windows Explorer, Robocopy, Xcopy etc.? The short answer is that Windows Explorer, Robocopy, Xcopy uses I/O buffering during the copy process opposite Eseutil.exe which does not use I/O buffering. If you want the long geeky answer, I can recommend you checkout this rather old (but still very interesting) blog post on the Ask the Performance Team blog, which talks about copying all types of large files (SQL databases etc.) using Eseutil.exe as well as what happens during the process.

That was all for now, hope you learned something new today.

Cheers,
Henrik Walther

Note:
Should you have any ideas for content in future editions of the MSExchange.org newsletter, you are more than welcome to shoot me an e-mail at Henrik@msexchange.org

2. Order Henrik Walther's Exchange Server 2007 book

3. MSExchange.org Learning Zone Articles of Interest

We have a great group of articles in the Learning Zone that will help you get a handle on your most difficult configuration issues. Here are just a few of the newer and more interesting articles:

• GroupWise to Exchange 2007 Migration - Common Q & A
• Managing exchange certificates (Part 2)
• Exchange Server 2007 SPAM filtering features without using Exchange Server 2007 Edge Server
• Managing Exchange Server 2007 Log Files (Part 1)
• Monitoring Exchange 2007 With System Center Operations Manager 2007 (Part 3)
• A Practical Look at Migrating From Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 (Part 1)
• Uncovering the Exchange 2007 Edge Transport Server (Part 6)
• Managing Exchange Certificates
• Protecting Microsoft Exchange in Physical & Virtual Environments
• Using the Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer Tool (Part 2) 

4. KB Articles of the Month

Here are some interesting and useful MSExchange related articles posted by Microsoft in the last month:

Exchange 2007

• The installation of the Exchange Server 2007 Hub Transport role is unsuccessful on a Windows Server 2008-based computer
• You receive an "Event ID 4999" and an "Event ID 5000" error message when you try to mount a database on a server that is running the cluster continuous replication feature in Exchange 2007
• Inline attachments are not displayed in Outlook 2007 e-mail messages
• Outlook 2007 does not open some calendar items that are sent from a non-Exchange mail server to an Exchange mail server 
• When you send e-mail from Outlook to a non-SMTP address, you receive a non-delivery report message if your organization includes Exchange Server 2007 
• When you use Microsoft Transporter Suite for Lotus Domino to migrate messages to Exchange Server 2007, some messages may be migrated without attachments 
• Multiple error messages occur when you try to install Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 
• You cannot include the default global address list in a new or existing Offline Address Book in Exchange Server 2007 
• When you try to uninstall Exchange Server 2007, the uninstall operation stops responding when it runs the task to remove Exchange files 
• The Exchange database online maintenance schedule, Information Store maintenance schedule, quota notification schedule, and OAB generation schedule are offset by one hour when DST changes occur 
• An Exchange 2007 Hub server incorrectly sets the Sent time on an e-mail message

Exchange 2003

• The Store.exe process crashes on a server that has Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 installed 
• The Store.exe process crashes on a server that has Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 installed 
• The Store.exe process crashes on a server that has Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 installed

5. MSExchange News of the Month

• Making Sense of the Messaging and Collaboration Market
• Deploying Exchange Server 2007 on VMware Infrastructure: A VMware Internal Case Study 
• Quest Software Launches Coexistence Manager for Notes
• First Public E14 Video available 
• Congratulations 2009 Microsoft MVP! 
• Messageware Unveils OWA Suite 2009 for Microsoft Exchange Server 
• Microsoft Expands Exchange ActiveSync Licensing Program

6. Ask Henrik Walther a question

QUESTION:

Is it possible to replicate public folder databases from a standby continuous replication (SCR) source to an SCR target using SCR mechanisms?

ANSWER:

Nope, this is not a supported method to provide site resiliency for public folder databases. You must instead use traditional public folder replication mechanisms to replicate public folders from one physical site/datacenter to another.
You should be aware that SCR and public folder replication are two very different forms of replication built into Exchange Server 2007.