Introduction to the Exchange 2010 Monitoring Management Pack
Topic Last Modified: 2012-11-19
You can find the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack in the System Center Management Pack Catalog (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=82105).
What's New
The Exchange 2010 Monitoring Management Pack includes features that weren't included in the Exchange 2007 Management Pack. The following are some of the features that were added in the RTM version of the Exchange 2010 Management Pack:
Alert correlation By maintaining the health model in memory, and processing state change events, the Exchange 2010 Management Pack determines when to raise an alert based on the state of the system.
Alert classification The Exchange 2010 Management Pack uses the following alert categories to classify alerts: Key Health Indicator (KHI), Non-Service Impacting (NSI), and Forensic.
Mail flow statistics reporting Hourly and daily e-mail transaction statistics are collected by using message tracking log data.
Service-oriented reporting Uptime is reported based on the uptime of the application, service, and feature uptime rather than on server uptime.
Exchange-aware availability modeling Client availability uptime is measured for each type of Exchange client, based on test user transactions.
Changes in the Service Pack 2 Update
The Exchange 2010 SP2 version of the Exchange 2010 Monitoring Management Pack includes many fixes intended to increase the scalability and address customer reported issues since the Service Pack 1 Update. The following list includes some of the new features and updates:
Resolved ObjectNotFoundExceptions in correlation engine The SP1 version of the Correlation Engine could encounter ObjectNotFoundExceptions on a regular basis. The number of exceptions of this type is significantly reduced in this update.
Reduced load on RMS/MS A number of improvements were made to reduce the load of the Management Pack on the RMS/MS. The following specific changes were made:
Reduced the number of read operations the Correlation Engine makes to the SDK to get entity and monitor states.
Improved cache handling in Correlation Engine when Management Pack updates are applied.
Increased correlation interval time from 1.5 minutes to 5 minutes.
**Reduced load due to discovery **The discovery interval was increased from 4 hours to 24 hours and improved handling of Domain Controller objects to decrease churn.
Improved Database Copy Health monitoring Replaced KHI: Database dismounted or service degraded with One Healthy Copy monitor to decrease load on RMS.
Improved Performance monitoringNon reporting Perf Instances are now enabled by default and some write operations were removed to decrease unnecessary writes to the database.
The Exchange 2010 SP1 version of the Exchange 2010 Monitoring Management Pack includes significant improvements beyond those included in the RTM version of the Exchange 2010 Monitoring Management Pack. The following list includes some of the new features and updates
Changes included in the Service Pack 1 Update
The Exchange 2010 SP1 version of the Exchange 2010 Monitoring Management Pack includes significant improvements beyond those included in the RTM version of the Exchange 2010 Monitoring Management Pack. The following list includes some of the new features and updates
Capacity planning and performance reports New reports dig deep into the performance of individual servers and provide detailed information about how much capacity is used in each site.
SMTP and remote PowerShell availability report The management pack now includes two new availability reports for SMTP client connections and management end points.
New Test-SMTPConnectivity synthetic transaction In addition to the inbound mail connectivity tasks for protocols such as Outlook Web App, Outlook, IMAP, POP, and Exchange ActiveSync, the Management Pack now includes SMTP-connectivity monitoring for outbound mail from IMAP and POP clients. For information about how to enable this feature, see Optional Configurations.
New Test-ECPConnectivity view Views for the Exchange Control Panel test task are now included in the monitoring tree.
Cross-premises mail flow monitoring and reporting The Management Pack includes new mail flow monitoring and reporting capabilities for customers who use our hosted service.
Improved Content Indexing and Mailbox Disk Space monitoring New scripts have been created to better monitor context indexing and mailbox disk space. These new scripts enable automatic repair of indexes and more accurately report of disk space issues.
The ability to disable Automatic Alert Resolution in environments that include OpsMgr connectors When you disable Automatic Alert Resolution, the Correlation Engine won't automatically resolve alerts. This lets you use your support ticketing system to manage your environment. For information about how to disable this feature, see Optional Configurations.
Several other updates and improvements were also added to this version of the Management Pack, including the following.
Suppression of alerts when the alerts only occur occasionally was added to many monitors.
Most of the event monitors in the Exchange 2010 Management Pack are automatically reset by the Correlation Engine. Automatic reset was added to those event monitors so that issues aren't missed the next time they occur. For a list of the event monitors that are not reset automatically, see Understanding Alert Correlation.
Monitoring was added for processes that crash repeatedly.
Additional performance monitoring was added for Outlook Web App.
Monitoring of Active Directory access was improved.
Monitoring of anonymous calendar sharing was added.
Reliability of database offline alerts was improved.
Monitoring for the database engine (ESE) was added.
Supported Configurations
The following table shows the supported configurations for the Exchange 2010 Management Pack and the Correlation Engine component.
| Configuration | Support |
|---|---|
Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 R2 |
Exchange 2010 computers that the Exchange 2010 Management Pack monitors must be running a 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008. This is based on the minimum requirements for Exchange 2010. The Correlation Engine supports 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. |
Agentless monitoring |
Not supported. |
Virtual environment |
Environments supported by both System Center Operations Manager and Exchange 2010 are supported. |
System Center Operations Manager |
|
Clustered SCOM 2007 Root Management Server/Correlation Engine or clustered SCOM 2012 Management Server/Correlation Engine |
Adding the Correlation Engine service to a clustered installation is supported, provided it's configured so that only one instance of the service is running at a time. |