The Exchange Server 2007 Management Console
includes a Toolbox with several tools that can assist you in the
identification and resolution of common Exchange problems.
The Toolbox can be accessed from the Exchange Management Console, in the console tree.
Included
in the Toolbox are a series of configuration management tools, disaster
recovery tools, mail flow tools, and performance tools. Each of these
is covered in the following sections, with some information about their
use.
Another
feature of the Toolbox, and one that is extremely forward thinking, is
that each time you launch one of the utilities, a connection is made
back to Microsoft to determine if you are running the most recent
iteration of the tool. If not, an update is downloaded and installed,
ensuring that you have access to the most current updates.
Configuration Management Tools
Utilities
in the Configuration Management Tools section are intended to review an
existing Exchange environment and make recommendations that will help
organizations with improperly configured settings. The findings are
compared against best practices and recommendations developed by the
Microsoft Exchange Server Team and reports are generated that offer
recommended changes.
Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA)
At
Microsoft, when a customer needs urgent assistance with problems that
affect their business and end users, they refer to the issue as a
“critical situation,” or CritSit. In 2003, the Microsoft Exchange
Server Team noticed that, in over 60% of these situations, the issue
was because of a configuration error, not a bug in the software.
From
this discovery, the decision was made to design and implement a utility
that would gather information about an organization’s Exchange and
Active Directory implementation and compare what was found against
Microsoft recommended best practices.
Included with Exchange Server 2007, the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer, or ExBPA, does exactly that.
When running the ExBPA, the scope of the scan determines how in depth the analysis will be. You can choose from three options:
The entire Exchange organization
One or more administrative groups
One or more servers from any administrative group within the organization
After the scope of the scan has been determined, you can choose from several types of scans:
Health Check—
This check performs a full scan, checking the environment for errors,
warnings, recent changes, and configuration settings that are not at
the default settings. As the name implies, Health Check scans are
useful to assess the overall health of your organization, and can also
be extremely useful when troubleshooting particular problems.
By
adding the Performance Check option, the analyzer completes the health
check and then gathers information by sampling various Exchange Server
performance counters for a period of 2 hours.
Permission Check—
The permission check reviews administrative groups and permissions on
the Exchange servers in your environment and reports on critical
issues, noncritical issues, nondefault settings, and recent changes in
the environment.
Connectivity Test—
This type of scan tests network connections and permissions on all
Exchange servers identified in the selected scope. A connectivity test
can be helpful to evaluate the configuration of firewalls in your
environment to ensure they do not hamper necessary Exchange server
communications. You can also use this test if you suspect a problem
that is caused by permissions access.
Baseline—
The baseline scan compares findings on servers to baseline values that
you configure. The report then identifies any findings that differ from
the values you configured.
Exchange 2007 Readiness Check—
It is recommended to run this check early in your planning phase for
Exchange 2007. This check is intended to identify potential problems in
your environment that will hamper your deployment.
It
is recommended to use ExBPA after you install a new Exchange server,
upgrade an existing server, or make configuration changes to your
environment.
Disaster Recovery Tools
Utilities
in the Disaster Recovery Tools section are intended to review the
health and stability of mail databases in your Exchange organization.
Database Recovery Management
The
Database Recovery Management tool is intended to help administrators
restore Exchange messaging services in the event of a disaster. This
utility examines an Exchange Server deployment when a database is
unable to mount. Based on the information gathered, the tool
automatically generates recommended step-by-step instructions to bring
the database back online.
To use the
Database Recovery Management tool, double-click the appropriate icon in
the Toolbox. A wizard walks you through the steps for performing an
analysis and viewing the results.
Database Troubleshooter
The
Database Troubleshooter analyzes the databases and any available
transactions logs on a particular Exchange server. The utility reports
any issues found that might affect the ability to recover the database
in the event of a failure. By scanning the log files, the tool is able
to report on missing or corrupted files and offers recommended steps to
perform to ensure the database is brought to a clean, mountable
condition.
To use the Database
Troubleshooter, double-click the Database Troubleshooter icon to launch
the tool. A wizard walks you through the steps for performing an
analysis and viewing the results.
Mail Flow Tools
Utilities
in the Mail Flow Tools section are designed to assist in monitoring
your Exchange environment to see where bottlenecks or complete mail
flow blockages might be occurring.
Mail Flow Troubleshooter
The
Mail Flow Troubleshooter provides easy access to various data sources
that are necessary to troubleshoot common problems with mail flow, such
as messages backed up in mail queues, slow delivery of messages, or
unexplained nondelivery reports.
When you run the Mail Flow Troubleshooter, you begin by selecting the problem you are experiencing from a drop-down box.
Note
Although
this tool can be run against servers running Exchange 2000 Server,
Exchange Server 2003, and Exchange Server 2007, some of the options
(such as Find a Lost Message) are restricted to only run against
Exchange Server 2007 servers. These restricted options are labeled with
For Exchange Server 2007 Only.
Based on the symptoms selected, the utility guides administrators through a recommended troubleshooting path.
Administrators
start by selecting the symptoms observed. The utility then
automatically diagnoses the data gathered and presents a report that
contains possible root causes. The utility also suggests corrective
actions and guides administrators through the correct troubleshooting
path.
To launch the Mail Flow Troubleshooter, double-click the appropriate icon. A wizard walks you through the troubleshooting steps.
Message Tracking
The
message tracking utility has been around in one form or another since
Exchange 5.5. This utility allows administrators to search for messages
and determine the path they took through the Exchange environment. In
Exchange 2007, message tracking records the SMTP transport activity of
all messages entering or leaving an Exchange 2007 Server with the Hub
Transport, Mailbox, or Edge Transport server roles. By default, message
tracking is enabled on all Exchange 2007 servers running one of these
roles.
The message tracking logs cannot
be configured utilizing the Microsoft Management Console. To make any
changes to the default configuration log settings, you must use the
Exchange Management Shell.
The message
tracking utility is intended primarily for mail flow analysis,
reporting, and (of course) determining the status of a message that has
been reported as undelivered.
Administrators can search for messages based on any combination of the following fields:
Server
Event ID
Sender
Message ID
Subject Line
In
addition, the administrator can specify a Start and End date and time
to search for the message. In organizations with large message stores,
it can be extremely beneficial to narrow the scope of the search as
much as possible, as sorting through all messages in the environment to
look for a particular one can take a significant amount of time.
Double-click the Message Tracking icon to launch the tool. A wizard walks you through the steps for tracking messages.
Queue Viewer
The
Exchange Queue Viewer is an Exchange Management Console snap-in that is
added to the Toolbox when an Exchange Server 2007 Hub Transport or Edge
Transport server is installed.
The Queue
Viewer is a graphical interface that allows administrators to view
information about mail queues and mail items on a transport server. In
addition, administrators can perform management actions on these items.
Often used for troubleshooting mail flow and identifying spam messages,
administrators can also use the viewer to easily perform intrusive
actions against the queuing databases, such as suspending or resuming a
queue, or removing messages.
Using the
Queue Viewer requires certain administrative permissions. To use Queue
Viewer on a computer that has the Edge Transport server role, you must
use an account that is a member of the local Administrators group on
that computer. To use Queue Viewer on a computer that has the Hub
Transport server role, the account you use must also be a domain
account that has the permissions assigned to the Exchange View-Only
Administrators Universal Security group. Double-click the Queue Viewer
icon to launch the tool.
Performance Tools
The
Toolbox also contains tools that are intended to assist with improving
and maintaining the overall health of the Exchange servers and
environment.
Exchange Server Performance Monitor
One
of the most powerful, yet often overlooked, utilities is the Exchange
Server Performance Monitor. This tool is essentially the same as the
Windows Performance Monitor, but it has a series of predefined counters
that are related specifically to Exchange, including message traffic
sent or received per second, Average Disk Queue Length, and several
counters to monitor remote procedure calls (RPC) traffic. Of course,
the old favorites are still there, including memory, processor, hard
drive, and network utilization.
This
utility might be considered less intuitive because there is no built-in
wizard to assist with its configuration, but a great deal of
information can be gathered about your Exchange environment, virtually
every measurable aspect of an Exchange server can be monitored using
this tool. The data collected can be presented in a variety of forms,
including reports, real-time charts, or logs. Using the Performance
Monitor, administrators can take baseline readings on server and
network performance, and compare them over time to spot trends and plan
accordingly, but it is most commonly used to view parameters while
troubleshooting performance problems.
Double-click
the Performance Monitor icon to launch the tool. It automatically
starts displaying a live graph of the key performance indicators for
the machine on which tool is
launched. More information on the usage of the tool can be found in the
System Monitor Help files within the tool, and from the Microsoft
website.
Performance Troubleshooter
With
an interface that looks very similar to the Exchange Mail Flow
Troubleshooter, the Performance Troubleshooter is designed to help
administrators identify and locate performance issues that are having a
negative impact on an Exchange environment.
Like
the Mail Flow Troubleshooter, administrators begin by selecting the
symptoms they are experiencing. Based on these systems, the utility
identifies potential bottlenecks in the messaging system and outlines a
troubleshooting path for the administrators to follow.
Double-click
the Performance Troubleshooter icon to launch the utility, bringing up
a wizard that walks you through the steps necessary to perform an
analysis and view the results.
