SBS Monitoring Log Filled to Capacity Redux

In November 2011, I had a client server whose SBS Monitoring log filled to capacity.  I talked about that here.  The fix I implemented should have been a permanent resolution (or so I read).  In July 2012, I began to get the same event log errors related to this problem.  My log had filled to capacity again.  I had to follow the same procedure.  In this case, I kept these notes:

• it took 1 hour and 10 minutes to run the script
• the SBSMonitoring.LDF file grew to 28 GB

As a reminder, I followed the article listed here to fix this:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2009/07/14/sbs-2008-console-may-take-too-long-to-display-alerts-and-security-statuses-display-not-available-or-crash.aspx

Screen shot of the SBSMonitoring.LDF file after running the script:

Screen shot of the place where you shrink the  SBSMonitoring.LDF file:

Screen shot of the SBSMonitoring.LDF after being shrunk:

Annoying issue - but I'm documenting this for my own knowledge and for anyone else who may have this issue.

shrinking the SBSMonitoring_log.ldf file

After taking steps to address the size issue of the SBS 2008 monitoring file as described here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2009/07/14/sbs-2008-console-may-take-too-long-to-display-alerts-and-security-statuses-display-not-available-or-crash.aspx

I found that my SBSMonitoring_log.ldf had grown to over 30 GB. The proper size is well less than 1 GB. What we need to do is shrink that LDF file. Here is what I did:

1. Open an elevated SQL Server Management Studio Express

2. Connect to the [servername]\SBSMonitoring database using Windows Authentication

3. Expand Databases and right-click on SBS Monitoring

4. Choose Tasks, then Backup

5. Make a backup of the current database

6. After backing up, right click SBSMonitoring and choose Tasks, Shrink, file.

7. In the opening window, choose Log in the File Type drop down list and click OK.

8. Now the SBSMonitoring_log.ldf file should shrink.

** of note, running the backup in step 4 is recommended, but I didn't run it as I was in a hurry to resolve this problem and it wasn't apparent to me where the backup would go. The C drive would be illogical as I had no space on the C drive. Given my time crunch (the low space on C was causing Exchange problems), shrank the file without backup and it did not cause any problems.

Blackberry troubleshooting with SQL issues

Today, I dealt with an issue where I ended up rebuilding my entire Blackberry Professional Express server on an SBS 2003 box.  Here is my nightmare and what I did to address it.

First, I had an existing user that got a new Blackberry.  I deleted the user from Blackberry Manager, as I had done many times before.  But this time, I could not add him bacl.  It kept telling me "User 'username' is in delete pending state on server 'servername', please recover the user before adding user to server"

As far as I can tell, there is no option to recover a user in Blackberry Professional, only in Blackberry Enterprise.  So then I read about options to delete the user from the SQL database.  I saw this for MDSE:

http://www.blackberryforums.com.au/forums/general-bes-discussion/2018-bes-professional-recover-user.html

And I was advised to do this in SQL Express 2005:

Log on as your besadmin account and select Windows trust authentication.
Open table "dbo.UserConfig" and delete the entry where appear your old BlackBerry user.

But that didn't help either.  But somehow when I was in SQL Express in the appropriate database for the Blackberry, something got corrupted and now none of my Blackberries were working.  

To make a long story short - what I eventually did was redownload and reinstall the Blackberry Professional Express software, create a new SQL instance, and install it there.  The steps needed an SBS box are documented here and here.