Tag Archives: log files

Exchange: PowerShell Commands

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KB ID 0001405

Problem

This might seem like an odd title for an article here at PNL? But I’m going to use this page as a place to put all the commands I’m sick of Googling for, and/or working out every time I do an Exchange job.

So as with all the posts here, it’s here for my benefit, and if anyone else gets something from it great!

Exchange General

Change Exchange Licence Code

[box]Set-ExchangeServer -Identity Server-Name -ProductKey 12345-12345-12345-12345-12345[/box]

Exchange Mailboxes

How Many Mailboxes Per Database?

[box]Get-Mailbox | Group-Object -Property:Database | Select-Object Name,Count | Sort-Object Name | Format-Table -Auto[/box]

 

Exchange Mailbox Migrations

Migrate a Single Mailbox

[box]New-MoveRequest -Identity “Fred Bloggs” -TargetDatabase “Destination-DB” -BatchName “Fred Bloggs” -BadItemLimit “200” -AcceptLargeDataLoss[/box]

Migrate ALL Mailboxes in one Database to Another

[box]Get-Mailbox -Database “Source-DB” ” -ResultSize Unlimited | New-MoveRequest -TargetDatabase “Destination-DB”[/box]

Display Mailbox Migration Progress

[box]Get-moverequest | get-moverequeststatistics

OR

Get-moverequest -MoveStatus InProgress

Get-moverequest -MoveStatus Failed

Get-moverequest -MoveStatus Queued

[/box]

Remove Mailbox Move Requests

[box]Get-MoveRequest -MoveStatus Completed | Remove-MoveRequest[/box]

Exchange Databases

List All Mailboxes in a Database

[box]Get-Mailbox -Database “Database Name“[/box]

Create a Mailbox Database 

[box]New-MailboxDatabase -Name Database-Name -EdbFilePath X:\Folder\Database\Database-Name.edb -LogFolderPath X:\Folder\Log-Folder\[/box]

Show Database (and Log File) Locations

[box]Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | select EdbFilePath
Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | select LogFolderPath[/box]

Move a Database (and Log Files)

[box]Move-DatabasePath -Identity Database-Name -EdbFilePath X:\Folder\Database\Database-Name.edb
Move-DatabasePath -Identity Database-Name -LogFolderPath X:\Folder\Log-Folder\[/box]

Show Mailbox Database ‘Whitespace’

[box]Get-MailboxDatabase -Status | select Name,DatabaseSize,AvailableNewMailboxSpace[/box]

Users and Groups

Exchange Create a Distribution Group

[box]New-DistributionGroup -Name “DG-All-Users” -Type “Security”[/box]

Exchange Add All Users (In an OU) to a Distribution Group

[box]Get-Mailbox -OrganizationalUnit “cn=users,dc=petenetlive,dc=com” -resultsize unlimited|ForEach-Object { Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity “DG-All-Users” -Member $_ }[/box]

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

NA

VMware – Datastore Browser shows “Searching Datastore….”

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KB ID 0000401 

Problem

I did a VMware VI3 to vSphere (4.1 U1) upgrade today. While bringing all the guest machines across, suddenly I could no longer browse the datastore, I only had one more guest to “Add to the inventory”, and all the mission critical machines were already migrated. I tried rebooting the virtual center, I tried restarting the ESXi host machines, still it sat saying “Searching Datastore……”.

Solution

1. I found the solution by accident. I was adding virtual machines to the new VSphere inventory, so I went in search of a method of doing it from the console, I was just about to:

Command to add a VMware guest to the inventory

[box]vmware-cmd -s register {full path to virtual machine}MACHINE_NAME.vmx[/box]

But, while looking in the folder with the guest files, I saw thousands of log files, I guess the VI client is struggling to parse them all, and display them. A quick internet search and I found out I can safely delete the log files.

2. Log into the ESX/ESXi servers console, for ESXi servers (version 4.0 and below) see here, for newer versions you can simply enable SSH access from Troubleshooting Mode Options > Enable Remote Tech support (SSH).

3. Log on as root and issue the following command to find the symlink path to your shared storage:

[box]ls -l /vmfs/volumes/[/box]

4. Now you know your symlink, you can change to the folder that contains the affected guest OS.

[box]cd /vmfs/volumes/{your symlink}/{your vm folder}[/box]

5. To get rid of all the log files, simply issue the following command.

[box]rm -f vmware-*.log[/box]

6. Now retry and you should see the folder contents when you “Browse Datastore”.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Exchange 2003 – Defragmenting Your Database with Eseutil

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KB ID 0000814 

Problem

I don’t have many clients left that still have Exchange 2003, so this will probably be the last time I have to do this (famous last words).

Exchange databases NEVER get smaller, if you delete information out of them, it simply creates white space, that Exchange will reuse, (so they will steadily grow in size). Before you carry out this procedure, get your users to clear down their mailbox’s. Also delete/purge any unused mailboxes, this will make your defrag more efficient.

Solution

In my case the server the database was on was short on drive space. Remember you need 110% of the size of the database free space to carry out this procedure (so a 50GB database needs 110GB of free space to defragment). I did this with an external USB Drive.

Note: Moving large databases to USB media can take a while, at USB 2 Speed (48MBps (480Mbps)) took about 45 minutes to copy the database files to it.

1. You don’t need to to do this but, locate where the log files for this database are being stored, because in a minute we are going to take a copy (just in case). Right click the storage group the database is in > Properties > General > Transaction log location.

2. Now for the database itself, right click the Mailbox Store (or public folder database if that’s the one you are going to defrag) > Properties > Database > Exchange databases.

3. On my external drive I’ve created two folders, one holds the original untouched database files and the logs, the other (EDB_Files) holds a copy of the priv1.edb and priv1.stm files for the mailbox database that I’m going to defragment.

4. Eseutil.exe lives in the Exchange program folder in the bin directory, change to that directory;

[box]
cd “c:Program FilesExchsrvrbin”
[/box]

Now if we simply run eseutil on the database, it will create a temporary database on the C: drive, which I don’t want (remember we are tight for drive space). So I will specify where the temp database will be, and start the defragmentation.

[box]

eseutil /d {Path to the Database} /t {Path to the temp Database}

e.g.

eseutil /d H:EDB_Filespriv1.edb /t H:EDB_FilesTempDB.edb

[/box]

How long will eseutil take? That’s a horrible question to answer, it depends on the CPU/memory of the server, and the size of the database itself. in this case it was a 70GB Database, on an HP G4 Series server, it took 11 hours and 6 minutes (approx).

5. When done it should say it has completed successfully.

6. You can now delete the original EDB and STM files from the Exchange Server.

7. Then copy and paste your defragmented versions back into the original folder.

8. You can now mount the mail store(s).

9. Finally make sure you get a full backup of the Exchange database, (with some Exchange aware backup software).

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

ESEUTIL error – “Unable to find the callback library jcb.dll”