Can't defrag 2000 Server with Exchange 5.5 on it

[maxc246]

Yes, I know Exchange 5.5 is older than dirt, but that's not the point.


The hardware running Windows 2000 Server with Exchange 5.5 is less than
a year old and the HDs have plenty of free space. We have 3 - 150 GB
HDs running a RAID 5. I've tried several ways to get defrag to
complete with no luck. The most drastic approach was a few weekends
ago when I turned off every service that wasn't needed to run defrag,
including all Exchange services, and let defrag run for over 24 hours.
Defrag still did not accomplish anything.

Even worse, if you try to stop defrag, it won't stop, and it hangs the
system so you can't reboot the server. Every time I've tried to defrag
this thing I've ended up having to power it down and cold boot it.

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated.

Max.

 

[Hank Arnold]

Why do you think you need to defrag the drive? Exchange has its own built in
process that defrags the datastore every evening. Check the event logs to
verify that it was set up. This is where any performance improvements will
be made w.r.t. Exchange. There is a school of thought that says that a file
level defrag will not help and can only hurt Exchange performance.

If you insist on doing a file level defrag, I think you r problem has to do
with some software or service that is generating a drive access. This will
cause the defrag to reset since it thinks the drive has changed. If you
watch the defrag for a while, you would probably see this happening over and
over. In situations like this I usually will boot into Safe Mode and do the
defrag again. However, I would strongly urge you to stop trying it *RIGHT
NOW*!!! If you keep doing a hard power off, you will eventually trash the OS
or hard drive. At least make sure you have a good solid backup of the
Exchange and whatever is needed to re-build the server before you try
again...

 

[Brian Cryer]

Why do you think you need to defrag the drive? Exchange has its own built
in process that defrags the datastore every evening. Check the event logs
to verify that it was set up. This is where any performance improvements
will be made w.r.t. Exchange. There is a school of thought that says that
a file level defrag will not help and can only hurt Exchange performance.

Defragging the drive and defragging the exchange data store are different.
Exchange defrag is defragging the logical contents of its data stores. It
won't affect how fragmented or otherwise the file is on the disk.

I don't see how defragging the drive could possibly hurt Exchange
performance. Certainly while you are defragging it will hurt performance,
but afterwards it will either make no difference or improve it. I say "no
difference", because I'm sure in the majority of times the performance gain
after defragging isn't noticable because windows is so good at caching.

If you insist on doing a file level defrag, I think you r problem has to
do with some software or service that is generating a drive access. This
will cause the defrag to reset since it thinks the drive has changed. If
you watch the defrag for a while, you would probably see this happening
over and over. In situations like this I usually will boot into Safe Mode
and do the defrag again. However, I would strongly urge you to stop trying
it *RIGHT NOW*!!! If you keep doing a hard power off, you will eventually
trash the OS or hard drive. At least make sure you have a good solid
backup of the Exchange and whatever is needed to re-build the server
before you try again...

Firstly, I agree 100% with what you've said here. I'll admit that I have
never defragged our servers. I used to do it when we had NT 4 servers but
somehow I've just never got round to it with our 2003 servers, so I'll
accept that what I'm about to say could be totally wrong: back in the days
of Windows 95/98 the defrag would restart if a file was accessed, but
assuming the defrag on Windows 2000 server is the same as that on Windows
2000 and XP then I wouldn't expect it to restart (or hang).

 

[Brian Cryer]

Yes, I know Exchange 5.5 is older than dirt, but that's not the point.


The hardware running Windows 2000 Server with Exchange 5.5 is less than
a year old and the HDs have plenty of free space. We have 3 - 150 GB
HDs running a RAID 5. I've tried several ways to get defrag to
complete with no luck. The most drastic approach was a few weekends
ago when I turned off every service that wasn't needed to run defrag,
including all Exchange services, and let defrag run for over 24 hours.
Defrag still did not accomplish anything.

Even worse, if you try to stop defrag, it won't stop, and it hangs the
system so you can't reboot the server. Every time I've tried to defrag
this thing I've ended up having to power it down and cold boot it.

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated.

Max.

Just some thoughts and ideas:

1. Do you really need to defrag? (Just a thought!)

2. When defrag locks up can you still use the server or does the whole
server lock up? Oops, sorry, just seen you said in your post it locks the
server. Could be a controller problem possibly, so:

3. Are there any errors logged in the system or application event logs that
even vaguely relate to this or to any disk or controller problem?

4. Try reinstalling the latest service pack for Windows 2000 - even if you
think its already been applied.

5. Is the RAID via software or hardware? or put another way are you letting
Windows control the RAID or is it done via a RAID card. If its via a RAID
card then check for updated drivers AND look into whether the RAID card
provides any diagnostic features. (Be careful, I once trashed a raid by
asking it to do a disk check without appreciating this was a destructive
test - fortunately it didn't matter, but be careful.)

6. Are you using the default windows defragger or a third party one?

7. How much free space is available on the raid?

 

[Max C.]

Thanks for taking the time to try to help me out. Here are some
answers:

1. Do you really need to defrag? (Just a thought!)

Good golly, yes! In addition to being our Exchange server, this server
also hosts our external BackupExec tape drive. That's how I discovered
the need. We have a Gigabit backbone and I can back up our SQL server
(an entirely different server) over ethernet faster than I can back up
file on this Exchange server, and that includes files outside of the
Exchange database, like Windows files. When I opened the defrag
utility and analyzed the drive, it was ALL red.

2. When defrag locks up can you still use the server or does the whole
server lock up? Oops, sorry, just seen you said in your post it locks the
server. Could be a controller problem possibly, so:

It doesn't really lock up the server. I can still do stuff in the
server. I can start and stop most services, but once I start defrag, I
know I won't be able to shut the server down... even if I manually stop
the defrag usnig task manager.

3. Are there any errors logged in the system or application event logs that
even vaguely relate to this or to any disk or controller problem?

Nothing that I've been able to find. Maybe I need to revisit the logs
and research things that I previously didn't think had anything to do
with this.

4. Try reinstalling the latest service pack for Windows 2000 - even if you
think its already been applied.

I hadn't tried that. I'll give it a shot.

5. Is the RAID via software or hardware? or put another way are you letting
Windows control the RAID or is it done via a RAID card. If its via a RAID
card then check for updated drivers AND look into whether the RAID card
provides any diagnostic features. (Be careful, I once trashed a raid by
asking it to do a disk check without appreciating this was a destructive
test - fortunately it didn't matter, but be careful.)

It's a RAID card. I'll check in to the updated drivers and firmware as
you suggest. That's a good idea.

6. Are you using the default windows defragger or a third party one?
Windows.

7. How much free space is available on the raid?

3/4 of the drive is free space... over 100 GB... which is why I would
have thought that there wouldn't be any fragmented files. :-\

Many thanks.