Exchange failure - questions

Curio · 16 Oct 2012 at 14:22

I really don't know much about Exchange or the server side of things - I do basic tech support for the small company I work for (among many other things...) which is all pretty basic client-side stuff. Anyway...

Our E-Mail was down for around 5 hours the other day. According to the company who provides our server support, the server had run low on disk space, which caused the Exchange transport to stop and the database to dismount.

Is this a plausible explanation? I know there are issues with the disk space, so we'll say that part is legit - but would that cause the problems with Exchange? I ask because I'm a little suspicious of this support company. They are constantly trying to sell us a 24/7 server monitoring plan.....and straight after this issue with Exchange they were telling us that if we had had the 24/7 monitoring this issue could have been fixed before we even arrived in the morning. Maybe this is all totally true and I'm being paranoid.........I don't know enough about it to form a fair and accurate opinion.

Any experts care to voice their opinion?

RSR · 16 Oct 2012 at 14:35

Sounds a plausible to me, if you have sever level access to the solution you can install a monitoring agent to keep a eye on them or setup event logs for such events.

Yamahahahahaha · 16 Oct 2012 at 14:43

More likely the database dismounted because the disk was full, the transport stopping is consequential. Logs will still be written cyclically to one of the log files (0.log?).

I saw this problem happen a lot in Exchange 2003 setups when the bizarre built-in limit on Standard (18GB?) was reached. It only took a registry fix to bump the Information Store up to 75GB, but it happened none the less.

TL;DR, Yes it's possible.

HarryPainful · 16 Oct 2012 at 14:49

Curio said:
Maybe this is all totally true and I'm being paranoid.........I don't know enough about it to form a fair and accurate opinion.

Any experts care to voice their opinion?

Your support company ARE the experts, and you would not have had 5 hours of down time if you listened to them and was not so paranoid.

tribz · 16 Oct 2012 at 15:02

Yes, it could be the cause. My Exchange 2010 server stopped receiving external mail the other day as the C drive was running low on space despite the stores being kept on D. Once I cleared some space, mail started being processed again. It did not dismount though, just wouldn't accept new external messages.

Event log quote "Microsoft Exchange Transport is rejecting message submissions because the available disk space has dropped below the configured threshold."

It shouldn't dismount unless your store is too large.

#Chri5# · 16 Oct 2012 at 15:07

Depends on what version of Exchange you have.

Backpressure in Exchange 2007 / 2010 will see the Transport Service stop processing new messages but usually keep the Information Store up / mounted.

If you are running out of disk space, a common reason is the Exchange IS logs aren't being flushed out when a backup completes. So the next question I'd be asking is about the state of the backup...

Curio · 16 Oct 2012 at 17:26

Thanks guys. Just wanted to make sure. By the way, there is a long back-story with this support company that has made us all a bit "touchy" about them. I'm not being paranoid for absolutely no reason.

Knubje · 17 Oct 2012 at 09:58

100% possible, depending on the server configuration of course.

shotgunshand · 24 Oct 2012 at 14:46

Curio said:
I really don't know much about Exchange or the server side of things - I do basic tech support for the small company I work for (among many other things...) which is all pretty basic client-side stuff. Anyway...

Our E-Mail was down for around 5 hours the other day. According to the company who provides our server support, the server had run low on disk space, which caused the Exchange transport to stop and the database to dismount.

Is this a plausible explanation? I know there are issues with the disk space, so we'll say that part is legit - but would that cause the problems with Exchange? I ask because I'm a little suspicious of this support company. They are constantly trying to sell us a 24/7 server monitoring plan.....and straight after this issue with Exchange they were telling us that if we had had the 24/7 monitoring this issue could have been fixed before we even arrived in the morning. Maybe this is all totally true and I'm being paranoid.........I don't know enough about it to form a fair and accurate opinion.

Any experts care to voice their opinion?

Yes if the disc that holds your exchange on it gets below certain tolerance levels configurable within exchange then transport will stop.