How to Exclude a Mailbox Database from Automatic Mailbox Provisioning

Exchange Server 2010 and above includes a new feature that can automatically load balance the provisioning of new mailboxes across multiple mailbox databases.  Although the Exchange administrator can still specify a mailbox database if they want to, it is no longer mandatory and the Exchange server can make the decision as to where to provision the new mailbox instead.

Despite the benefits there are also situations in which the Exchange administrator would not want mailboxes automatically provisioned on a particular database.

To exclude a specific Exchange Server mailbox database from automatic provisioning use the following command in the Exchange Management Shell.

[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxDatabase -Identity "Mailbox Database 04" -IsExcludedFromProvisioning $true

To re-enable the mailbox database for automatic provisioning set the value back to $false.

[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxDatabase -Identity "Mailbox Database 04" -IsExcludedFromProvisioning $false

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