XADM: MTA Startup Slow When Database is Large

• Microsoft Exchange Server, version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

After an abnormal shutdown, the Microsoft Exchange Message Transfer Agent (MTA) service may take an extremely long time to start. On large databases, this could mean several hours.

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft Exchange does several file checksums to each individual Db*.dat file located in the \Exchsrvr\mtadata directory each time the MTA starts after an abnormal shutdown has occurred. This is done to maintain file integrity to prevent further MTA failures. Microsoft Exchange may scan each file several times and, in some cases, this can be thousands of files with gigabytes of information.

Microsoft has determined that some of the file integrity checks performed by the MTA are too CPU intensive and redundant and offer no cost effective gain to maintaining database integrity over other, faster, methods.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 4.0. This problem was corrected in the latest Microsoft Exchange Server U.S. Service Pack. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

   S E R V P A C K