Hi All,

As Rob Wilcox pointed out Exchange 2010 SP2 Update Rollup 1 has been released by the Exchange team (click here for Rob's post). Included in this update is the fix to ensure deleted space is reclaimed.  

The following Microsoft KB article describes the issue that has been fixed.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2621266

The update has been tested and whitespace reclamation is working as per my previous blog (see here).

Customers currently running the Interim update...

1. Remove the interim update
2. Upgrade to Exchange 2010 SP2 (this involves a schema change so you will need to do a /PrepareAD).
3. Install Exchange 2010 SP2 Update Rollup 1 on your Mailbox servers.

Try and keep the time between installing SP2 and then Update Rollup 1 to a minimum as this creates a window for the issue to arise again.

Customers currently running Exchange 2010 SP2 or without the Interim update...

1. Upgrade to Exchange 2010 SP2 if you haven't already (this involves a schema change so you will need to do a /PrepareAD).
2. Install Exchange 2010 SP2 Update Rollup 1 on your Mailbox servers.
3. Consider creating new mailbox databases to host journaling and user mailboxes.  Why do this?  The fix does not reclaim any previous deleted space - therefore by moving the mailboxes to a new DB you can then delete the old DBs and reclaim the maximum amount of disk space.
4. Continue to monitor the available new mailbox space  (get-mailboxdatabase -status | ft Name, AvailableNewMailboxSpace)
5. Check and revise your shortcut deletion strategy to potentially recover further space.

Regards

Karl