Exchange Server Sluggish

[mohaughn]

Is this exchange standard or enterprise? If it is standard you need to be watching your total database size. It is limited to 16 gb in standard. If you have two mailboxes that are 6-8gb a piece, you could be close.

But that will actually keep the store from mounting, so probably not the cause of what you are seeing, but be aware of it.

I'm really suprised that nobody has mentioned doing performance monitoring. That is where I would start. Run ExBPA in health mode and have it do a two hour health check. It will check disk IO, CPU, and memory utilization. If you have a hardware issue that will probably find it.

You can also just follow the general MS troubleshooting performance guide, it tells you exactly what perf counters to monitor and what is acceptable levels.

I also would not use the /3gb switch unless you totally understand how that will impact kernel memory and the ramifications of that switch. You need to have more than 1GB of memory for it to be of use. ExBPA should have picked this up if you need to use it.