Exchange 2010 – how to take traces using ExTRA (traces analysis by Support Engineers only)

 

Go to the Exchange Client Access Server and turn on EXTRA tracing. To do so, take these actions:

1) Go to Start, Run… Type EXTRA

2) Once EXTRA opens, at the Update and Customer Feedback screen, Choose “Check for Updates on Startup” and “I do not want to join the program at this time”

3) Check for Updates Now…

4) Once the updates have been applied, Go to the Welcome Screen…

5) Choose Select a Task…

6) Choose Trace Control… Click OK on the Informational Message

7) Verify that you have plenty of hard drive space on the server. Change the location of the trace file to the location with the larger amount of hard drive space available. Change the Maximum log file size from 100MB to 500MB. (Circular Logging should be enabled by default).

8) Then choose Set Manual Trace Tags…

10) Under Set Trace Tags Manually, select all the Trace Types…

11) Under Components to Trace section, Select OWA and ensure all Components should also be selected.

12) Apply the Mailbox filter for the User Mailbox who you can reproduce the issue with.

13) Start Tracing and reproduce the problem.

14) Stop the Tracing, The default location for the .ETL (EXTRA file) will be in the Root of the Current User directory if it hasn’t been changed previously in step 7.

 

Traces will be viewable by an Exchange Support Engineer.

Note1: He'll use a tool while extrace.exe –c –v ExchangeDebugTrace.ETL > output.csv

Note 2: Version Microsoft.Exchange.Diagnostics.dll must match the one corresponding to the server we took traces from...

Note 3: Exchange admins: don't take into account the above previous notes for your daily operations/troubleshooting, it's a reminder for me and a FYI so that you guys have an idea of things MS Support can do behind the scene...