We got a call from our client saying that users cannot send and receive Email this morning, and we noticed that there is very little spaces (less than 100MB) remaining in M Drive where the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Database resided.
Please refer to the following steps taken to Extending the M Drive for Exchange 2010 Mailbox Database
- Moving all Active Mailbox Database to remaining Exchange 2010 Server – 2 x Exchange 2010 are configured as DAG Mailbox Cluster
- Shutdown 1 x Exchange 2010 Server (VM) which is running on Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V Server
Windows 2008 R2 Hyper-V do not support Online Expanding of VHD yet, and you will need to shutdown the VM to extend the VHD file
Right Click on the VHD file and Select “Expand”
Enter the new Size for the existing VHD file – Existing is 1,204GB and to expand additional 300GB , just enter 1324GB
- it will take 2 hours to successfully expanded additional 300GB in my case
- Power On the Virtual Machine (VM) once the expanding VHD is completed
- Go to Disk Management and you will see the additional 300GB Free Space at the end of the Hard Disk. Right Click and select Extend Volume to extend it to the maximum size
- Move all the Active Mailbox Database based to this server, and we noticed that all Email queue in Exchange Queue are releasing immediately
- User can send and receive Email via Exchange 2010 as normal now
Additional Information
Shadow Protect is installed on the Exchange 2010 Server, and we cannot extend the volume (even the extend volume operation show successfully, but the M Drive is still showing 1,024GB in Windows Explorer), when Shadow Protect is running the backup job. We have to stop all Shadow Protect Services to make sure that it is NOT running prior expanding the volume