Diagnosing Exchange Server 2003 Problems

The Microsoft article "How to Gather Data to Troubleshoot Exchange Server 2003 Virtual Memory Issues" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=823150) provides guidance about the information you need to gather to troubleshoot Exchange virtual memory problems. The article recommends that you run VaDump against store.exe because it's the most memory-intensive Exchange process. VaDump requires that you provide the PID for the process you want to debug, so use Task Manager to obtain the PID, as I described earlier. In Figure 3, the PID for the Store process is 4368. To capture the Store process that has a PID of 4368, use the following command:

vadump -v -p 4368 > f:diagnosis\va_store_23mar2004
.txt

VaDump doesn't generate a log file by default, so you'll need to use the redirection symbol (>) to generate a log file that PSS can analyze. I recommend that you give the dump file a meaningful name that includes the process name and the date of the VaDump session, such as the name I used in the preceding example. The -v switch directs VaDump to capture verbose information. . . .