Mailbox Database Seed Status

Seeding large mailbox databases can potentially take a long time. Although it is something that usually does not need to be monitored, it is always good to keep an eye on it to see how it is doing. The Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus cmdlet gives us all the information we need for this.

Usually I use this cmdlet in the following format to ensure the mailbox database copies on a particular server are mounted and/or healthy:

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus -Server "server_name" | Sort Name

But we can use it to get further details for a particular mailbox databases (the following output has been shortened to only include the most relevant information for this tip):

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus “MDB01\EXAIO” | FL

Identity : MDB01\EXAIO
DatabaseName : MDB01
Status : Seeding
MailboxServer : EXAIO
ActiveDatabaseCopy : EXMBX01
ActiveCopy : False
ActivationPreference : 3
IsLastCopyAvailabilityChecksPassed : False
LastCopyAvailabilityChecksPassedTime :
IsLastCopyRedundancyChecksPassed : False
LastCopyRedundancyChecksPassedTime :
ActivationSuspended : True
ContentIndexState : FailedAndSuspended
ContentIndexErrorMessage : Reseeding of the index is required.
ContentIndexErrorCode : 22
CopyQueueLength : 718053
ReplayQueueLength : 0
ReplicationIsInBlockMode : False
ActivationDisabledAndMoveNow : False
AutoActivationPolicy : Unrestricted
ReplayLagStatus : Enabled:False; PlayDownReason:None; Percentage:0; Configured:00:00:00;
Actual:00:00:00
DatabaseSeedStatus : Percentage:33; Read:95.19 GB; Written:95.19 GB; ReadPerSec:23.65 MB; WrittenPerSec:23.67 MB
DiskFreeSpacePercent : 60
DiskFreeSpace : 434.7 GB (466,730,405,888 bytes)
DiskTotalSpace : 717 GB (769,869,737,984 bytes)
DatabaseVolumeMountPoint : E:\Mount\edb09\
LogVolumeMountPoint : E:\Mount\edb09\


If we are particularly interested on the progress of the seed operation, we can filter the above output to only include what we want:

(Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus “MDB01\EXAIO”).DatabaseSeedStatus