Tomorrow we are scheduled to move our single server Exchange 5.5 site over to a new Compaq DL380 server that is part of a SAN. Old server is NT4, SP6. New server will be Windows 2000, SP2 but will still have Exchange 5.5, SP4.
My boss wants us do a complete backup of the server tonight, then come in tomorrow and do a defrag of the database, back it up again, and restore it to the new server. It seems to be the general consensus on this list that defrag=bad. But what about in this situation where we are moving to a new server and we are scheduled to have the server down for 24 hours anyway? I checked the event logs and, as of last night it shows that the database has 16 megabytes of free space after online defragmentation. Is this the "white space" that I've heard about? And is that all the space we will gain by doing a defrag? If that's the case, I will suggest we don't take the time and risk of doing a defrag of the IS. I'm guessing it will take at least 2-3 hours to defrag our 36GB database???? Or will there be a performance increase by doing a defrag now? Thanks for your input. Tim List Charter and FAQ at: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/exchange_list_charter.htm
