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How to disable circular logging in Microsoft Exchange so that differential or incremental backups of Exchange Storage Groups and Databases can be performed.

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Hi,

Here is some old school assistance with Exchange 2003 and 2007. Yeah, yeah we all know it is no longer supported, however is not cheap to upgrade instantly. Hope this helps on circular logging.

Problem

How to disable circular logging in Microsoft Exchange so that differential or incremental backups of Exchange Storage Groups and Databases can be performed.

Error Message

 
Job Log shows :

 

V-79-57344-33943 - AOFO: Initialization failure on: "Microsoft Information Store". Advance Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

 

Snapshot provider error 0xe0008497 - Incremental and differential backups are not possible because Microsoft Exchange is configured for circular logging.

 

Cause

The above error is encountered when :

  1. Circular Logging is enabled for Exchange Database.
  2. Microsoft information Store Service was not restarted.
  3. Exchange Database was not dismounted and remounted after disabling Circular Logging.
     

Solution

 

If incremental or differential backups of Exchange are desired, it is necessary to disable circular logging on the Exchange Storage Groups or Databases. With circular logging enabled, only information included in the last full backup can be recovered.

 

When circular logging is enabled, transaction log files that have already been committed to the database are overwritten, preventing the accumulation of logs. The log files are overwritten whether or not a full or incremental backup has been run, and a history of previous logs since the last full or incremental backup is not maintained. This is why, when circular logging is enabled, differential and incremental backups of the Exchange databases cannot be performed (since these types of backups rely on complete history of logs).

 

Note: Exchange Server supports multiple databases and storage groups on the same server. Each storage group is controlled by a separate instance of the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE). Therefore, each storage group shares the same set of log files. As a result, circular logging is enabled or disabled for a particular storage group, not for a particular database.

 

Circular logging and disk space:

 

When circular logging is disabled, transaction log files accumulate on the disk until a full or incremental backup is performed. After this, the log files that have all transactions committed to the database are deleted. Performing a full backup of the Microsoft Exchange Server is the preferred way of saving the log files and removing these logs from the disk to utilize the space effectively. If a solid backup strategy is in place, transactions log files are purged during the backup, which frees disk space.

  

To disable circular logging in different version of Exchange Server, perform the following: 

How to Disable circular logging in Exchange 2000 Server and Exchange Server 2003 :

  

1.       Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.

2.       Expand Server, right-click the storage group that you want to change, and then click Properties.

3.       In the Properties dialog box, click to clear the Enable Circular Logging check box.

4.       Click OK. When you are prompted to confirm that you want to continue, click Yes.

5.       Restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service. To do this, follow these steps:

 

a.       Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.

b.      In the right pane, click Microsoft Exchange Information Store. Then, click Restart on the Action menu. If you receive a message that other services will also be restarted, click Yes

How to Disable Circular Logging in Exchange 2007 :

   

  • To use the Exchange Management Console to disable circular logging:

1.      Start the Exchange Management Console.

2.      In the console tree, expand Server Configuration, and then click Mailbox.

3.      In the work pane, right-click the storage group for which you want to enable or disable circular logging, and then click Properties. The <Storage Group Name> Properties dialog box appears.

4.      Clear the Enable circular logging check box.

5.      Click OK.

6.      To make your changes to the circular logging settings effective, Restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service, or dismount and then mount all of the databases in the storage group.

 

  • To disable circular logging using Exchange Management Shell, run the following command:

Set-StorageGroup -Identity "First Storage Group" -CircularLoggingEnabled $false

Be also ensure that you do a back up of the logs in case as once you activate it, it will clear it up.