You should have an error, or several, in the event log. I’d check it out.

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On 
Behalf Of NP
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2017 12:09 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com
Subject: RE: [Exchange] Changing logging to Circular and back?

I had one member in the DAG where passive copies of the DB’s were suspended.  I 
resumed sync and then all the log files cleaned themselves up on our primary 
pair of servers where the DB are active.

But I still have random db’s on my passive DAG members where everything is in 
sync but 2 db’s on one server have logs left behind and 3 db’s on the other 
have logs left behind.  (100’s of thousands)

I’m going to wait until my backup completes and see if things clean themselves 
up.  If I get a successful backup and the logs files are still there I would 
think I’d see a gap between the backup completion time and the possibly now 
orphaned log files.

I’ve already regained over 2TB of space (on each of my 4 servers), that’s how 
bad this was.

Thanks again for your help.

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Michael B. Smith
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2017 7:41 AM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Subject: RE: [Exchange] Changing logging to Circular and back?

Do not, Do Not, DO NOT delete log files manually. Doing that safely is far 
beyond the kind of support I can provide here.

There are entries in the application log regarding each backup and its result. 
You should be able to find out why those two databases did not truncate.

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Me
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2017 9:29 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Subject: RE: [Exchange] Changing logging to Circular and back?

Follow up.  Executed Script and 6 of my 8 DB’s cleared the log files.  Does 
that mean the other two are just lost in space and I’ll need to delete manually?

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of NP
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2017 1:37 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Subject: RE: [Exchange] Changing logging to Circular and back?

Thanks Michael, this is great.  To answer your question this is a 4 server DAG 
and on NTFS. 2012R2 next to latest build or so of Exchange 2013

Can I run this from any server or do I need to run it on every server that 
holds an active database copy?

If I understand the script correctly it’s just faking out Exchange and making 
it think the logs have been backed up?

Will it leave any log files behind and if so I assume it’s safe to delete?

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Michael B. Smith
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2017 1:02 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Subject: RE: [Exchange] Changing logging to Circular and back?

If you have a DAG, and are on ReFS, to the best of my knowledge this is the 
only supported solution. There is a Microsoft PSS/CSS tool that they use in 
“down server” calls that does exactly this.

If you aren’t on ReFS, there are some tricks you can play. But this (IMHO) is 
far easier.

And a comment I didn’t make earlier: after you run the script(s) below, 
immediately take a full backup! You’ve lost point-in-time recovery.

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Joseph L. Casale
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2017 1:49 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Subject: RE: [Exchange] Changing logging to Circular and back?

Pure awesome…

I quoted that years ago when asked what I would do in the Ops situation during 
an emergency where no or minimal space was left. I said "diskshadow". They 
declined to hire me on that premise. I still believe the method is every bit as 
valid and pretty much the only solution in some bad situations.

What a blast form the past:)
jlc

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Michael B. Smith
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2017 10:32 AM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Subject: RE: [Exchange] Changing logging to Circular and back?

Note: I don’t recommend this, except in emergencies.

Note that the script below assumes your databases are on C: and that there is 
not a volume named G:. Adjust as necessary.

That being said:

               [1] create a folder named c:\bk

               [2] within c:\bk create a file named online-backup.cmd. Insert 
these contents:

               @echo off
exit 0

[3] within c:\bk create a file named online-backup.dsh. Insert these contents:

# Diskshadow purge script.
set context persistent
set metadata C:\bk\online-backup.cab

# verify presence of 'Microsoft Exchange Writer'
writer verify {76fe1ac4-15f7-4bcd-987e-8e1acb462fb7}
# exclude 'Task Scheduler Writer' 2012
writer exclude {d61d61c8-d73a-4eee-8cdd-f6f9786b7124}
# exclude 'VSS Metadata Store Writer' 2012
writer exclude {75dfb225-e2e4-4d39-9ac9-ffaff65ddf06}
# exclude 'Performance Counters Writer' 2012
writer exclude {0bada1de-01a9-4625-8278-69e735f39dd2}
# exclude 'System Writer' 2012
writer exclude {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
# exclude 'FRS Writer' 2012
writer exclude {d76f5a28-3092-4589-ba48-2958fb88ce29}
# exclude 'SqlServerWriter' 2012
writer exclude {a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a}
# exclude 'NTDS' 2012
writer exclude {b2014c9e-8711-4c5c-a5a9-3cf384484757}
# exclude 'IIS Metabase Writer' 2012
writer exclude {59b1f0cf-90ef-465f-9609-6ca8b2938366}
# exclude 'IIS Config Writer' 2012
writer exclude {2a40fd15-dfca-4aa8-a654-1f8c654603f6}
# exclude 'WMI Writer' 2012
writer exclude {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
# exclude 'ASR Writer' 2012
writer exclude {be000cbe-11fe-4426-9c58-531aa6355fc4}
# exclude 'BITS Writer' 2012
writer exclude {4969d978-be47-48b0-b100-f328f07ac1e0}
# exclude 'Registry Writer' 2012
writer exclude {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
# exclude 'Shadow Copy Optimization Writer' 2012
writer exclude {4dc3bdd4-ab48-4d07-adb0-3bee2926fd7f}
# exclude 'COM+ REGDB Writer' 2012
writer exclude {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
# exclude 'MSMQ Writer (MSMQ)' 2012
writer exclude {7e47b561-971a-46e6-96b9-696eeaa53b2a}
begin backup

add volume C: alias shadow_C

create

expose %shadow_C% G:

exec C:\bk\online-backup.cmd
end backup
delete shadows exposed G:

exit

[4] open an elevated cmd.exe prompt. Cd to c:\bk. Execute the following command:

diskshadow /s online-backup.dsh

Voila!

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Joseph L. Casale
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2017 12:08 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Subject: Re: [Exchange] Changing logging to Circular and back?

Truncate them yourself if space is an issue before the proper backup strategy 
is in place. There are few ways to do this. Check out the eseutil docs.
From: NP
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 8:50 AM
Subject: [Exchange] Changing logging to Circular and back?
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Apparently we had a miscommunication between departments and our backup guys 
were only doing a DB copy when backing up our 2013 DB’s so logs haven’t been 
getting trunked for months.  That equals about 2TB’s of log files.  I’m not 
sure how to dig myself out of this (if we can’t get a full backup with logs so 
they are deleted) other than maybe turning circular logging on for a short time 
and letting Exchange clean them up.  Will Exchange even clean them up or will 
we still need to manually delete?
Thanks
Niles

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