Monitoring Exchange Server 2010
- 10/15/2010
To ensure that your Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 organization is operating reliably and efficiently, you need to monitor your Exchange Servers and make sure they are healthy. Proactive monitoring and preventive maintenance can help you identify potential errors before a serious problem interferes with Exchange operation.
Exam objectives in this chapter:
Monitor databases.
Monitor mail flow.
Monitor connectivity.
Lessons in this chapter:
Lesson 1: Monitoring Exchange Databases
Lesson 2: Monitoring Mail Flow
Lesson 3: Monitoring Exchange Connectivity
Before You Begin
In order to complete the exercises in the practice session in this chapter, you need to have done the following:
Installed the Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller VAN-DC1 and the Windows Exchange 2010 Enterprise Mailbox, Hub Transport, and Client Access server VAN-EX1 as described in the Appendix “Setup Instructions for Exchange Server 2010.”
Created the Kim Akers account with the password Pa$$w0rd in the Adatum.com domain. This account should be placed in the Domain Admins security group and be a member of the Organization Management role group.
Created the Don Hall account with the password Pa$$w0rd in the Adatum.com domain. This account should be placed in the Backup Operators security group (so it can be used to log on to the domain controller) and should be in the Marketing organizational unit.
Created mailboxes for Kim Akers and Don Hall, accepting the default email address format for the email addresses.
REAL WORLD
Ian McLean
As an Exchange professional, you understand the connection between sound operational practices and procedures and a healthy infrastructure. You regularly check the health of your servers, your mailbox and public databases, and all other aspects of your Exchange organization. You know that monitoring is a task that is—and definitely should be—invisible to the user. The problem with invisibility is that if monitoring is skipped one day, who is to know?
Administrators are very busy people, and we are all human. It is tempting to reduce the frequency of checks or even stop monitoring completely during particularly busy and stressful periods. But if monitoring is skipped for long enough, minor problems become major problems that affect your organization’s messaging infrastructure.
So it’s not sufficient to know how to monitor the various components of your exchange organization. You also need to formalize the procedures, roles, and responsibilities that are involved in monitoring operations. There needs to be an audit trail. A responsible person (probably you) needs to sign a piece of paper or an electronic document saying exactly what monitoring has been carried out, what the results were, and, if necessary, what actions were taken. The documentation should track trends so that it helps you detect the operations that are currently still proceeding in a satisfactory manner but aren’t running as well as they did a month ago. A senior person in your organization needs to check that the documentation has been completed as specified and to ask hard questions if it is not.
The procedures themselves need to be clearly described. If you and your entire team fell ill, would the consultants your organization brings in (hopefully as a temporary measure) have clear instructions about what to measure and what results to expect? I’ve seen some very capable and skillful administrators fall down when it comes to fully documenting their work. Please do not fall into the same trap.