Since I need some email from an address I use, I figured I’d have some fun and spin up the ol’ Exchange server.
To my surprise when I attempted to login to OWA (since the front ends were loading just fine) after authentication I would be greeted with “Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Storage.MailboxOfflineException”.
My initial googlings didn’t provide much of good results.
I went to the server and did the usual check services and such, and noticed the root cause. Low Disk Space. I figured extending the logical volume and a reboot would suffice… nope. Problem persisted.
I decided to run the MS Exchange health checker: https://aka.ms/ExchangeHealthChecker
even after getting everything green in the health checker, the problem persisted.
A bit more google fooing and I was able to track down someone with a similar problem on TechNet with some useful guidance to use eseutil.exe to check the database.
The database indeed return “Dirty Shutdown”
ran the repair commands. *Note* you should try to use /r before using /p if it works you don’t need to use /p as it’s a hard recovery and data loss could ensure from it. I didn’t care as it’s use lab data.
K checking again it return “Clean Shutdown” everything I’ve read says it should be able to be mounted now. Failed to Mount….
As a last ditch effort, I try to Google some more if I missed something else. I found this nice post by Eric Simson
Step 1: Backup the Database (my case don’t care)
Step 2: Check Storage
(Was the cause, extended volume to 190GB used out of 250GB)
Step 3: Restart Exchange Services (Yeap, ran health checker)
Step 4: Check Database State (Yeap fixed it)
Step 5: Repair Exchange Database (Yeap fixed it)
Yet even after reboot and using PowerShell AND using accept data loss…
I was about to give up when I had one final idea, I realized that since /p does a hard recovery of the DB even if the log files are lost, and the log files take up a lot of space…
At this point I had well over 50% free space on the server. I ran the repair DB command again just to be safe.
wait.. what .. no error…. guess I was only at 24% free space, and that wouldn’t cut it, I don’t get why considering the -AcceptDataloss was defined.
Go to log in to OWA…. Ehhhh!!! There’s my emails!
Hope this helps someone.
