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. 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. The script in this article is my edit to the original script from Edward van Biljon. You can download the official script from Microsoft Technet.

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 is showing $days=2. That means it will cleanup logs from the Exchange Servers that are older than 2 days.

If you have changed the path of the Exchange configuration, change the path in the line 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\

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.

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.

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

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

In this article, 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.

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