Question : Exchange 2000 Standard to Exchange 2000 Standard  on new hardware Swing Migration reaching 16 GB Limit

I am in the process of a swing migration of Exchange 2000 Standard ("old") to Exchange 2000 Standard ("new")  for the purpose of moving my exchange 2000 to new hardware. I have re-homed my public folders to the new server. In the process of moving individual mailboxes, I have become close to the 16 GB database limit on the Old Server.

Prior to adding the second server, I had completed offline defrags twice a year, so I am familiar with this process. (Due to the size of my Old harddrive, I have to copy the priv1 files to a different server for an offline defrag.)

Now that I have two Exchange 2000 servers, can I still do an offline defrag? Does it create a problem with some mailboxes on Old Server and some mailboxes on new server? If I continue to move the mailboxes, and my 16 GB limit is reached, can I still do the 17 GB registry hack? Is moving the mailboxes causing the Old Hardware Information Store to increase in size and if so, how small does my Old Information Store need to be to complete the swing migration without continuously hitting the 16 GB limit?

P.S. I do not have access to Exchange 2000 Enterprise or funds for Exchange 2003/2007. I just want to complete this swing migration. Thank you for your help.

Answer : Exchange 2000 Standard to Exchange 2000 Standard  on new hardware Swing Migration reaching 16 GB Limit

Hi Brewersewer,

I can't reccomend moving to Exchange 2003 or 2007 enough in that the migration to 2003 involves about the same e amount of work for mailbox moves to a new 2000 server and doing so would mean you only need one 2003 server as your limit on standard edition would be 75GB for the info store. If your systems meet the requirements for a 2003 upgrade, I would reccomend going that route.

To answer the above questions:

1. Yes, you can do an offline degfrag and it will only affect mailboxes on the server that has a DB that is being defragged in that they will be offiline while the defrag is performed. You will not need to defrag boxes on the target mailbox server as there will be no whitespace to reclaim in the database immediately after mbox moves.

2. The store does not increase in size on the source mailbox server so you should not have to use the temp limit increase.

3. The mbox moves will use extra log file space as the boxes are moved but this does not count against the size of the database. If you're moving 8GB of mailboxes, make sure you have at least that amount of extra space on the drive that your log file resides.

Also, don't be surprised if you move 8GB of mailboxes to the new server but find that it freed up less than 8GB due to single instance storage being broken. See below.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175481

Again, if you're looking to get out of a bind and don't have the time to do a 2007 migration, a 2003 migration is really a good option in that you will do the same amount of work once and totally avoid the space issue altogether.