Restrict High Memory Usage by Information Store on Exchange 2007 / 2010 (also SBS 2008 / 2011)

Scope:

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 (in conjuncion with Active Directory), or Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 / 2011.

Issue:

Microsoft Exchange Information Store (store.exe) consuming excessive amounts of system memory, often causing the server performance to take a significant hit.

Solution:

On the domain controller, open ADSI Edit (adsiedit.msc)

Connect to Well Known Name Context: Configuration

Drill into: Configuration > Services > Microsoft Exchange > [domainName] > Administrative Groups > Exchange Administrative Group > Servers > [serverName]

Right click on the server name and right click Information Store, then go to Properties

In the properties window, scroll down to the two attributes:

  • msExchESEParamCacheSizeMax
  • msExchESEParamCacheSizeMin

By default, the values of both are <not set>

We need to set values for both, if you only set values for the Max, then without the Min, the setting will not take place.

For Exchange 2007 (SBS 2008):

  • 1GB – 131072
  • 2Gb – 262144
  • 4Gb – 524288
  • 6Gb – 786432
  • 8Gb – 1048576

For Exchange 2010 (SBS 2011):

  • 1Gb – 32768
  • 4Gb – 131072
  • 6Gb – 196608
  • 8Gb – 262144
  • 12Gb – 393216

Note that Exchange 2007 uses a page size of 8KB and Exchange 2010 uses a page size of 32KB (hence the differing values).

Restart (or schedule restart) the Exchange server once the values have been applied.

Notes:

Although this solution is documented by Microsoft its not a supported configuration.

Don’t set the Max values too small otherwise your mailbox store may run into other issues and if too small, will cause more disk paging instead.