Installing the Exchange Management Pack

 

If you have MOM 2000 installed and you are monitoring computers running Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003, you must upgrade in the following order:

  • Upgrade your MOM 2000 server to MOM 2005.

  • Upgrade all agents.

  • Upgrade the Exchange Management Pack.

For more information about upgrading your MOM environment, see the MOM 2005 documentation.

Before you can install the Exchange Management Pack, you must install a MOM agent on your Exchange server. After the MOM agent installation is completed, and after the Exchange Management Pack is imported to the MOM server, the MOM agent on your Exchange server will automatically download the Exchange Management Pack from the MOM server. The Exchange Management Pack rules running within the MOM agent will detect whether required Exchange Management Pack binaries are installed on the Exchange server. If no Exchange Management Pack binaries are detected by the MOM agent, the agent will install them automatically.

When you install MOM 2005, Setup will detect which version of Exchange is in your environment. By default, computers running Exchange Server 2003 and later will already have Exchange Management Pack binaries installed on them. Earlier versions of Exchange did not include Exchange Management Pack binaries, so MOM 2005 Setup searches for these servers and, if it locates one with an agent already installed, installs these same binaries automatically. Additionally, MOM will continue to query your environment every 15 minutes to determine whether a new Exchange server with a MOM agent was added, and will install Exchange Management Pack binaries on any Exchange server with a MOM agent that it detects.

Installing the Exchange Management Pack requires two additional steps after MOM is installed. First, you must import the Exchange Management Pack. Second, you must install the Configuration Wizard.

Importing the Exchange Management Pack

You can import the Exchange Management Pack from the MOM 2005 Administrator Console as described in the following procedure.

To import the Exchange Management Pack

  1. Copy the MicrosoftExchangeServer2003.akm file from the either the \Tools folder on the MOM 2005 installation CD or from the Microsoft Download center to the MOM consolidator server.

  2. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, and then click Administrator Console.

  3. In the MOM 2005 Administrator Console, in the Console Root, expand Microsoft Operations Manager.

  4. Right–click Management Packs, and then select Import/Export Management Pack. The Management Pack Import/Export Wizard opens.

  5. In the Management Pack Import/Export Wizard, on the Welcome page, click Next.

  6. On the Import or Export Management Packs page, verify that Import Management Packs and/or reports is selected, and then click Next.

  7. On the Select a Folder and Choose Import Type page, click Browse to locate the folder in which you have downloaded the MicrosoftExchangeServer2003.akm file. Under Type of Import, select Import Management Packs only and then click Next. Note that you can also import reports from this page if you want.

  8. On the Select Management Packs page, verify that the correct files are selected, click Next, and then click Finish. When the installation is finished, verify that the Description pane indicates that the installation was successful, and then click Close.

Create a Topology Diagram of Your Existing Exchange Organization

The ability to create a topology diagram of your existing Exchange organization is a new feature of the Exchange Management Pack on MOM 205. Exchange 2003 topology features include the following:

  • Grouping servers by routing groups

  • Displaying server role (mailbox, front-end, bridgehead)

  • Displaying health state of each server

  • Displaying connectors

To generate a topology diagram

  1. Identify the Exchange server that will perform topology discovery. This server will populate the Exchange Diagram. You can use any computer that is running Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003 in the Active Directory® forest.

  2. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, and then click Administrator Console.

  3. In the MOM 2005 Administrator Console, locate the Console Root, expand Microsoft Operations Manager\Management Packs, and then click Computer Groups.

  4. In the right pane, right-click Microsoft Exchange Topology Discovery Computers, and then click Properties.

  5. In the Microsoft Exchange Topology Discovery Computers Properties dialog box, click the Included Computers tab.

  6. On the Included Computers tab, click Add, and then add the topology server you identified in step 1.

  7. Click OK to close any open dialog boxes.

  8. In the MOM 2005 Administrator Console, in the left pane, expand Administration\Computers, and then click All Computers. In the right pane, right-click the computer that you identified as the topology discovery server and then click Properties.

  9. In the Properties dialog box, click the Security tab.

  10. On the Security tab, clear the Prevent agent from proxying for other computers or network devices check box, clear the Use global settings check box, and then click OK. If MOM and Exchange Server are installed on the same computer, your server will be designated as a Management Server. As a result, the Security tab will not be available and you will not need to configure proxying settings.

  11. To view the topology diagram, open the Operator Console. To do this, click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, and then click Operator Console.

  12. In the Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 - Operator Console, in the left pane, click Diagram.

  13. Your topology diagram will be generated, and displayed in the center pane after the topology collection process has completed. This could take several minutes.

Installing the Configuration Wizard

The Configuration Wizard can be installed and run from any computer that has Exchange System Manager installed. You must have .NET Framework 1.1 installed for the wizard to work.

To install the Configuration Wizard

  1. From the Support\Tools folder on the MOM 2005 installation CD, copy Configapp.msi to any computer on the network that is running Exchange System Manager.

  2. Double-click the file from the location to install the Configuration Wizard.

Using the Exchange Management Pack with Exchange Clusters

The Exchange Management Pack can monitor not only individual servers running Exchange 2003, but also clusters of Exchange 2003 servers. Server clusters are automatically detected through scripts and the Exchange Management Pack components. The Exchange Management Pack can discriminate between active and passive servers, and can identify both nodes and the virtual server running on the active node. Logging for clusters can occur both at the individual virtual server level and at the physical node level. For example, disk space usage reports can be generated for each physical disk, and MAPI availability reports can be generated for each virtual server.

Additional configuration is required to monitor Exchange Server in a clustered environment. To deploy the Exchange Management Pack to clustered servers, use the following process:

  1. Install the MOM agent on the physical cluster servers.

  2. Start managing for the virtual cluster.

Installing the MOM Agent

Add the server cluster to the MOM management group by installing the MOM agent on the physical servers within the cluster. For more information, see, "Discovering Computers and Deploying Agents" in the MOM 2005 Deployment Guide.

After the agent is installed on the physical servers, these servers will appear in the MOM Operator Console and report a state of success. The virtual cluster servers will appear in the MOM Operator console within several minutes and report a state of unknown.

Monitoring the Virtual Cluster

After you install the agent on the physical cluster nodes, the virtual cluster servers are added to the Administration\Computers\Windows Server Cluster Computers node in the MOM 2005 Administrator Console. It can take several minutes and possibly up to 30 minutes for the virtual servers to be added to this node. After the virtual cluster servers are added, right-click each server and then click Start Managing. In the MOM Operator Console, the state for these virtual servers should change to success.

To fully monitor server clusters, install the Server Clusters Management Pack for MOM 2005 from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=36002.

Using State Monitoring with Exchange Clusters

If you have State Monitoring enabled, and if you have multiple virtual servers hosted on one node, the Service State may not always accurately reflect your current state. For example, if you disable one of the virtual server's resources, such as SMTP, the Service State does not change. This is because the SMTP service is still running and servicing the other virtual server's SMTP resources.

Running Scripts on Exchange Clustered Virtual Servers

All Exchange Management Pack scripts run on all active cluster nodes. Each script identifies the Exchange virtual servers running on that node and then performs its function within each virtual server. If a node is passive, there will be no virtual servers to run the scripts against, so the scripts will stop running.

The following scripts generate events against a passive node:

  • Check HeapDeCommitFreeBlockThreshold Registry Key

  • Check 'services to monitor' registry key

  • Collect Operating System Server Information

  • Publish Exchange Management Pack data

  • Verify IIS Lockdown was run

  • Verify required Windows hotfixes

Collecting Service Discovery Data

Service discovery is the process of discovering roles, components, and relationships for managed computers. Each Management Pack collects service discovery data that is specific to the technology that the Management Pack supports. Many features of a Management Pack are unavailable until after service discovery data is collected for the first time. For example, features that require identifying roles, computer groups, and even target computers for specific rules require service discovery data.

By default, the Exchange Management Pack collects both local and topology-wide service discovery every hour. Local service discovery, which collects local data about each Exchange server running a MOM agent, is performed immediately after the Exchange Management Pack is deployed. However, topology service discovery is run only after a dedicated Exchange server within the Active Directory forest is added to the Microsoft Exchange Topology Discovery Computers computer group. For information about adding a server to this computer group, see the "Create a Topology Diagram of Your Existing Exchange Organization" section earlier in this topic.

Additionally, the reporting component of MOM relies on a nightly DTS job to transfer data from the MOM database to the MOM Reporting database. Therefore, after Exchange Management Pack is deployed, Exchange server reports will not contain any data until the next DTS job has finished running.