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Cleanup logs Exchange 2013/2016/2019

Starting from Exchange 2013 and higher, logs are taking up more space on the Windows Server. This is when cleanup logs Exchange 2013/2016/2019 script plays an important role. Clear Exchange logs with PowerShell and get free space on the Exchange Server. These logs are NOT database logs! You can safely delete these logs. In fact, I recommend you to delete them.

Logs are great when you need more information and want to have a look into it when you are having issues. Microsoft Exchange Servers are filling up easily with all these logs. The best way is to clear the logs because you need to free up some size on the disk.

Prepare the cleanup logs Exchange script

Copy the following code and paste it in Notepad. Save the file type as CleanupLogs.ps1. You can also download the CleanupLogs.ps1 script (direct link). If it does not give you a prompt to save the file, right-click on CleanupLogs.ps1 and click save link as. You should be able to save the script.

# Set execution policy if not set
$ExecutionPolicy = Get-ExecutionPolicy
if ($ExecutionPolicy -ne "RemoteSigned") {
    Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Force
}

# Cleanup logs older than the set of days in numbers
$days = 2

# Path of the logs that you like to cleanup
$IISLogPath = "C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\"
$ExchangeLoggingPath = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\"
$ETLLoggingPath = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\ETLTraces\"
$ETLLoggingPath2 = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\Logs\"

# Clean the logs
Function CleanLogfiles($TargetFolder) {
    Write-Host -Debug -ForegroundColor Yellow -BackgroundColor Cyan $TargetFolder

    if (Test-Path $TargetFolder) {
        $Now = Get-Date
        $LastWrite = $Now.AddDays(-$days)
        $Files = Get-ChildItem $TargetFolder -Recurse | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "*.log" -or $_.Name -like "*.blg" -or $_.Name -like "*.etl" } | Where-Object { $_.lastWriteTime -le "$lastwrite" } | Select-Object FullName
        foreach ($File in $Files) {
            $FullFileName = $File.FullName  
            Write-Host "Deleting file $FullFileName" -ForegroundColor "yellow"; 
            Remove-Item $FullFileName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | out-null
        }
    }
    Else {
        Write-Host "The folder $TargetFolder doesn't exist! Check the folder path!" -ForegroundColor "red"
    }
}
CleanLogfiles($IISLogPath)
CleanLogfiles($ExchangeLoggingPath)
CleanLogfiles($ETLLoggingPath)
CleanLogfiles($ETLLoggingPath2)

Make sure that you change line 8. At the moment, it’s set as $days=2. That means it will cleanup logs from the Exchange Servers older than 2 days.

If you have changed the path of the Exchange configuration, change the path in lines 11, 12, 13, and 14.

Save the file on the Exchange Server in the following path C:\scripts\. Give it the name CleanupLogs.ps1

Give your account permission access to the below four folders. If the script does not have permission, it will not cleanup logs in that folder. I recommend making a service account in Active Directory. Give the service user account read/write permission on the below four folders. Create a scheduled task to clear Exchange logs that will run every day with the service user account.

C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\ETLTraces\
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\Logs\

Run the cleanup logs Exchange script

Let’s look at how much the script will clear.

Before running the cleanup logs script

Before you run the script, have a look at how much free space you have on the drive. See the before cleanup screen.

Clean up logs Exchange before cleanup

Run the script as Administrator. Right-click the file CleanupLogs.ps1 and click on Run with PowerShell. A PowerShell window will show up and the script is cleaning up the logs. Wait till the PowerShell window disappears from the screen. It means that the script finished.

After running the cleanup logs script

Have a look again at how much free space you have on the drive. See the after cleanup screen.

Clean up logs Exchange after

The script did cleanup 14GB of the Exchange logs. Did the cleanup logs Exchange script help you out?

Note: Do you like to automate the script? Read more on how to Cleanup Exchange logs automatically with scheduled task.

Conclusion

You learned how to clear Exchange logs with PowerShell. It’s a great script to cleanup logs on Exchange 2013/2016/2019 and get free space. Don’t forget to create a scheduled task to cleanup logs on the Exchange Server to automate the process.

Did you enjoy this article? You may also like Move Exchange database to another drive. Don’t forget to follow us and share this article.

ALI TAJRAN

ALI TAJRAN

ALI TAJRAN is a passionate IT Architect, IT Consultant, and Microsoft Certified Trainer. He started Information Technology at a very young age, and his goal is to teach and inspire others. Read more »

This Post Has 67 Comments

  1. Great script! Removed over 60gb of log files. Only issue we have is it says it is deleting the contents of: ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\Logs\’ but it doesn’t. It shows each individual file to be deleted while the script is running. I can manually delete the files without issue. I checked the permission of the folder. SYSTEM & Administrators have full control. I also changed the script to go to the root of Diagnostics but same results. Is there anything else we can do? Only because this folder gets pretty big if left untouched. All the rest worked perfectly. Thanks in advance!

    1. Disregard. When it ran on it’s scheduled time, it deleted everything. Not sure why it didn’t when I ran it manually but it doesn’t matter. Thanks!

  2. 3 exchange servers in a DAG. Ran the script on each one. Scripts ran for over 15 mins and recovered over 80 GB each. I can finally stop growing my exchange VM’s C: drive

    Thanks

  3. To be honest I was a little apprehensive before running it on one of our servers but it seems to be doing the job great. I cleaned over 400GB and that’s just one exchange server out of 3
    Thank you!

  4. Nice Script – but is it possible to change log-level to something lower?

  5. Wow, since I was told to check out your website, this is the 3rd GREAT thing I’ve found most helpful, 30GB freed up. I’ll be checking back regularly for thing I don’t even know I’m missing! THANK YOU

  6. Hola Ali sos de gran ayuda todos tus consejos y permiten aprender mucho, estos Logs que se borrar no se estaría eliminando archivos de Auditoria? o cuales son los archivos que se utilizan para tal fin, saludos desde Argentina.

  7. Thank you SO freaking much for this. My logging folder accumulates close to 10GBs a day (not including Transaction logs) and was driving me nuts.

  8. Hi Ali,
    Can we add in this script to clean up the logs under this folder?
    The files without exstension
    “D:\ExchangeData\Transport\Queue\TempStorage\UnifiedContent”

    Thanks

  9. Hello
    the script will empty only the folders inside the actual folder “C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\” ?

    Thanks

    1. The script will clean up only the logs files (.log/.blg/.etl) from the following directories:

      C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\
      C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\
      C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\ETLTraces\
      C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\Logs\

  10. Hi
    Thank you for the script and it did free up some space
    c:\inetpub\logs\logfiles administrator and system have full access.
    Under w3svc2 the u_extend1_x.log files is 54GB
    Under w3svc1 the u_extend1_x.log file is 24GB
    Your script does not touch those files. can I just delete them?

  11. Thanks dear, very helpful script. I have another question that is also related to DB logs. In my exchange server 2019, DB logs take too much space, any solution?

  12. 100Gb saved on Exchange 2019, worked like a charm.

    Thank you very much Ali Tajran for your contribution here, really amazing thing you are doing.

    Recently I had to split 1.2TB .edb file to 2 smaller .edb’s, without the guidances in your website I would be lost.

    Totally amazing work here!

  13. Hey Ali! Thank you very much for the script. Why don’t you add C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\TransportRoles\Logs\ to the script?

  14. Hi Ali,
    Just wanted to thank you for all your great articles and scripts! You’ve saved me many times since I took over our Exchange infrastructure!

  15. Hi Ali,

    we got about 90 subfolders under logging. Most used Space is in folder HTTPProxy and MapiHTTP.
    Can we also be sure to delete these Logfiles?

    Thank you

  16. Hi, thanks for the great article. I will definitely try it soon 🙂
    I just want to ask, do I need to use the script before I use it:
    Disable these Exchange services?
    – Microsoft Exchange Health Manager Service
    – Microsoft Exchange Diagnostics
    Thank you

  17. Hi Ali, Great article. Quick question. Are these log files safe to delete on multiple exchange 2013 servers that are part of a DAG without breaking anything?

    Thanks

    Waseem

  18. Thank you, Mr. Tajran! I just freed up 40GB of logs on an Exchange server that was put in production this past May. I have it set to run every week now.
    Why Microsoft doesn’t automatically clear these log files automatically is a mystery to me.

  19. The script does not clean up c:\inetpub\logs\logfiles
    Several services needed to be stopped in order to delete those log files. I did not delete the log files but until stopping services it gave a retry on an attempt to delete the log files. Even after stopping those services and running the script again they did not clean up. Please advise.

    1. Start File Explorer. Go to the C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles. You will see two folders, which are: “W3SVC1” and “W3SVC2”. Ensure that both the “SYSTEM” and “Administrators” groups have full access permissions (Security tab). After that, try to remove the .log files manually. If that works, the script needs to work too.

  20. Hi Ali,

    Thanks for the wonderful advice – I just have one question if that’s okay. The Microsoft TechNet article seems to suggest that, within the C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\ folder, only the contents of the Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\ETLTraces and Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\Logs are safe to delete, but your script suggests the entire contents of the C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\ can safely be removed (obviously where the log files exceed the value in the script file) – can you please confirm which is correct ? Because if your version is accurate, I could save a *tonne* more space (which I desperately need right now) – I just don’t want to run the risk of breaking something as a result.

    Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it =]

  21. This is a great script.
    Adjusted the paths as needed and ran it and it works great.
    Thank you for sharing!

  22. thanks,
    works wonder full.
    i am not a full time exchange guru. but this realy helps. ( and cleans the standard MS stuff )

  23. Hi, anyone can help me?
    My exchange path is :
    $IISLogPath = “C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\”
    $ExchangeLoggingPath = “D:\Exchange Server\V15\Logging\”
    $ETLLoggingPath = “D:\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\ETLTraces\”
    $ETLLoggingPath2 = “D:\Exchange Server\V15\Bin\Search\Ceres\Diagnostics\Logs\”

    do i still need to save this script in C:\ ?

  24. Hi,

    thank you for the script.

    How to clean correctly the Database Logs even if these logs are in a dedicated Drive L:\logs\database_logs_1 ?

    My database logs are going full and I wanted to know how to clean it.

    1. Hi George,

      In this article, I explained how to cleanup Exchange logs. These are not database logs. Unfortunately, they will not truncate with a backup. That’s why I recommend using the PowerShell script to free up space.

      A good backup should truncate the database logs. It can happen that it’s not working at the moment, and you need to free up space. You can follow the article Truncate Exchange logs with PowerShell.

  25. Never did check those logs, then suddenly the mail queue is hanging. This script was a real life saver, thank you very much!

  26. Great script which regained me around 20GB of space on my server that was slowly but surely running low on space. I now have time to address my disk space issue at a more leisurely pace. Thanks.

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