Peter's space

Exchange 2013 heavily log the health of the server and all mail related actions and can fill up the main drive. There are two options to configure and move the log files to a separate dedicated log drive.

1. The first method is using an app called Junction from Sysinternals. You can create a symbolic link of the log folder and redirect to your desired drive. The folder has to be created by the app and cannot exist, therefore you need to rename your existing folder to log.old and then create one with the Junction. Of course the folder cannot be renamed while Exchange services are running, you need to do the whole process in safe mode. There are two locations where you need to create the sym link. The first called Logging and it is under C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\. The second one called Logs and it is under C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles

Junction

Once you are done restart your server and make sure all services are running and everything looks good

2. The second method is to use PowerShell and Notepad to configure services where there is an option to do that. Let’s start with the PowerShell part. It’s pretty long but has all the settings I’m aware of.

Start to put the server name into a variable

$exchangeservername = $env:computername

Then run the following PS cmdlets

Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -ConnectivityLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\Connectivity"


Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -MessageTrackingLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\MessageTracking"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -IrmLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\IRMLogs"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -ActiveUserStatisticsLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\ActiveUsersStats"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -ServerStatisticsLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\ServerStats"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -ReceiveProtocolLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\ProtocolLog\SmtpReceive"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -RoutingTableLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\Routing"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -SendProtocolLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\ProtocolLog\SmtpSend"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -QueueLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\QueueViewer"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -WlmLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\WLM"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -PipelineTracingPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\PipelineTracing"
Set-TransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -AgentLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Hub\AgentLog"
$EdgeSyncServiceConfigVAR=Get-EdgeSyncServiceConfig
Set-EdgeSyncServiceConfig -Identity $EdgeSyncServiceConfigVAR.Identity -LogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\EdgeSync"
Set-FrontendTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -AgentLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\FrontEnd\AgentLog"
Set-FrontendTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -ConnectivityLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\FrontEnd\Connectivity"
Set-FrontendTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -ReceiveProtocolLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\FrontEnd\ProtocolLog\SmtpReceive"
Set-FrontendTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -SendProtocolLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\FrontEnd\ProtocolLog\SmtpSend"
Set-ImapSettings -LogFileLocation "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\Imap4"
Set-MailboxServer -Identity $exchangeservername -CalendarRepairLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\Calendar Repair Assistant"
Set-MailboxServer -Identity $exchangeservername -MigrationLogFilePath  "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\Managed Folder Assistant"
Set-MailboxTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -ConnectivityLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Mailbox\Connectivity"
Set-MailboxTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -MailboxDeliveryAgentLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Mailbox\AgentLog\Delivery"
Set-MailboxTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -MailboxSubmissionAgentLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Mailbox\AgentLog\Submission"
Set-MailboxTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -ReceiveProtocolLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Mailbox\ProtocolLog\SmtpReceive"
Set-MailboxTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -SendProtocolLogPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Mailbox\ProtocolLog\SmtpSend"

Set-MailboxTransportService -Identity $exchangeservername -PipelineTracingPath "L:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\Mailbox\PipelineTracing"

Unload performance monitoring

add-pssnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.Setup remove-perfcounters –definitionfilename “C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\perf\AMD64\eseperf.xml

You can configure some of the monitoring porcesses through their config file. Search for MSExchangeHMWorker.exe.config and MSExchangeHMHost.exe.config files. In the config you can change either the max size of the log directory (MaxTraceLogDirectorySizeInBytes), the location of the logs (DefaultTraceLogPath) or disable entirely (IsTraceLoggingEnabled)

Also you can redirect IIS Logs just

Open IIS Manager
Select your server
In the Connections pane select Logging
Change the path for the log files
Note this change will apply to all of your sites hosted on the server

In my lab I’m running 11 Hyper-V based VMs and planning to install couple more. The total disk space they are using is 878GB on 3 different hard drive. Here is a screenshot of the usage before the dedplication.

In Windows Server 2012 we have a new feature called data deduplication see the Technet article about it. The data deduplication is a file server feature before you can use you need to install the file server role along with the deduplication feautre.
When you are done open up your server manager and go the File and Storage Services tab. in the new window select Disk where you can see your physical drives. You can’t enable data deduplication on the partition where the OS is residing and in this case we need to enable this feature on the 3 VM parttion/drive.

Select “General purpose file server” and type 0 in the “Deduplicate files older…” box

Running VMs are not supporting data deduplication jobs, you need to disable all scheduling and running the job manually after you shut down all of your running virtual boxes. Clear all check box on schedule page.

After you shut down the virtual machines open a PowerShell prompt and start the deudplication job by running the following:
Start-DedupJob -Volume : -Type Optimization