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Microsoft Exchange 2007 Synthetics Mail Flow Transactions Remote Discovery

 

Topic Last Modified: 2009-05-28

This workflow discovers Exchange Remote Mail Flow synthetic transactions on agent-managed Mailbox servers.

This discovery is disabled by default and allows you to setup Remote Mail Flow synthetic transactions via overrides. Remote Mail Flow synthetic transactions run between agent-managed Mailbox servers within the same Exchange organization.

To create a Remote Mail Flow synthetic transaction, you will need to override this discovery in the context of an agent-managed Mailbox server. The discovery runs every 24 hours by default. You can use the Mail Flow state view to check that the synthetic transaction was created.

Details

Product Name

Exchange

Product Version

8.0 (Exchange Server 2007)

MOM Rule Path

Microsoft Exchange Server/Exchange 2007

MOM Rule Name

Exchange 2007 Mail Flow Remote Discovery

Explanation

The discovery accepts the following overrides:

  • IntervalSeconds: the default frequency of the discovery (in seconds)

  • Logging Level: Controls whether the discovery will generate troubleshooting events to the event log on the agent where the discovery is running. Valid settings are:

    • 1 = Log errors only

    • 2 = Log errors and warnings

    • 4 = Log errors, warnings, and information

  • Sync Time: Allows you to specify a specific time at which the discovery should run

  • Target Servers: This is a semicolon separated list of target servers.

  • Timeout Seconds: the default time-out value of the discovery (in seconds)

User Action

Use the following procedures to configure a synthetic transaction and to change the time-out and frequency of the synthetic transaction.

Configuring a Remote Mail Flow Synthetic Transaction

To configure an agent-managed Mailbox server to perform a remote mail flow synthetic transaction, perform the following steps:

  1. In the Operations console, in the Authoring section, expand Object Discoveries. Ensure that your console is not scoped to a subset of management pack objects.

  2. Ensure that the Look for box is visible by selecting Find in the View menu in the Operations console.

  3. In the Look for box, type Remote and select Find now. A list of object discoveries appears.

  4. Right-click Exchange 2007 Mailflow Remote Discovery and choose Overrides\Override the Object Discovery\For a specific object of type: Exchange 2007 Mailbox Role. The Select Object message box appears.

  5. Select the Exchange 2007 Mailbox server you want to use as the sender, and click OK.

  6. The Override Properties dialog box appears. Change the Target Servers parameter. The parameter is a semicolon-separated list of destination Mailbox servers. The override supports using both the simple NetBIOS name of the target Mailbox server and the fully qualified domain name (FQDN). The FQDN is the preferred format to enter into the override.

  7. Choose a destination management pack to save the override and click OK.

Note

By default, when you create a management pack object, disable a rule or monitor, or create an override, Operations Manager saves the setting to the Default Management Pack. As a best practice, you should create a separate management pack for each sealed management pack, rather than saving your customized settings to the Default Management Pack. For more information, see Customizing Management Packs (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=140601).

A discovery will now run that generates a new instance of a remote mail flow watcher. This discovery runs every 24 hours by default. To check that the watcher was created, go to the Mailflow view, which will show all instances of mail flow watchers.

Note

This synthetic transaction will run every 30 minutes by default.

Changing the manually created mail flow synthetic transactions timeout and frequency

To change the time-out and frequency of the manually created Mail Flow synthetic transactions, perform the following steps:

  1. In the Operations console, in the Authoring section, expand Rules.

  2. Change scope to targets that start with “Mail Flow”

  3. Right-click the Exchange 2007 Test Remote Mail Flow Collection rule and select Overrides\Override the rule\For a specific instance of type: Mail Flow Remote Connectivity.

  4. Change the Interval Seconds (which is the frequency with which the transaction runs) and Error Latency (which is the value at which the Exchange test-mailflow cmdlet marks a transaction as failed) values to the desired ones (being sure to not save the overrides in the Default Management Pack). You can also change the Time-out Seconds value, which controls how long the cmdlet can run for in total. By default, five minutes is allowed.

  5. Choose a destination management pack to save the override and click OK.

Note

By default, when you create a management pack object, disable a rule or monitor, or create an override, Operations Manager saves the setting to the Default Management Pack. As a best practice, you should create a separate management pack for each sealed management pack, rather than saving your customized settings to the Default Management Pack. For more information, see Customizing Management Packs (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=140601).

  1. Perform the same steps for the Exchange 2007 Test Remote Mail Flow Monitor.

Note

Be sure to use the same Sync Time, Log Level (Logging Level), Time-out Seconds, Interval Seconds, and Error Latency values for the rule and monitor. This ensures that the synthetic transaction will run only once. If you use different overrides for the rule and monitor, the synthetic transaction will run multiple times: once for collecting performance data and once for collecting state information.

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