Overview

No amount of great technology will fix operational problems.

Tony Redmond

Now that we all understand the Zen of the Store and how things work internally, we move on to maintenance. It's great to get things set up and moving, but it's all the boring tasks like making sure that the databases stay online that make the difference between an Exchange server that delivers great service to its clients and one that does a horrible job.

In this chapter, we'll look at how Exchange 2000 performs online maintenance, the tools available for offline maintenance (when a database simply has to be taken out of service for some reason), how backups are performed, and other related topics.

5.1 Online maintenance

Online maintenance is performed on an ongoing basis with the intention of keeping the Exchange databases fit and healthy. Offline maintenance is performed when required. An analogy is to think of online maintenance as similar to the work done to pump oil through a car's engine to keep it lubricated. Offline maintenance is more like a service, where you have to bring the car to a garage and have a mechanic (or yourself) perform tasks that can only be carried out when the engine is stopped, such as changing the oil.

So much for analogies: after Chapter 4, you are familiar with the internal structures of the EDB and streaming files. The major technical differences between online and offline maintenance follow:

• Online maintenance is performed at a logical level and...