Technology at Harley

Last weekend our email server hit the database size limit and dismounted the information store, halting all email transport and access.

Originally with Exchange 2003 Standard Edition there was a 16GB limit on the information store. This was one of the factors used to force you to upgrade to the Enterprise Edition which is ridiculously more expensive . When the database hit that size it would dismount causing all your users to start wrapping torches and sharpening pitchforks. They enabled a registry tweak to allow you 1 more GB of space to allow you to mount the store and reclaim some space by deleting old email.

With Service Pack 2 they upped the default limit to 18GB, which is the threshold we hit a few days ago, and allowed an absolute limit of up to 75GB. You can set this limit with another registry tweak.

Of course this couldn’t have happened on a weekday when I was here, it had to happen on a Saturday while I was out to lunch with the family and some friends. Figures…