Configuring Mail Flow Synthetic Transactions

Applies To: Exchange Server, Operations Manager 2007 R2

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack supports several variations of mail flow synthetic transactions on Mailbox servers. It is possible to configure the following:

• Local mail flow (a server sends mail to itself)

• Intra-site mail flow (a server sends mail within a site)

• Inter-site mail flow (a server sends mail between sites)

• Inter-organization mail flow (a server sends mail to another organization/mailbox, which could also be used to send mail via the Internet as long as the recipient is able to generate a delivery receipt)

These synthetic transactions are performed using the Exchange 2007 cmdlet Test-Mailflow (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=137740). The cmdlet tracks availability and also collects latency data. Mail flow synthetic transactions are represented by perspective icons that look like a pair of glasses in the Operations console. They will change state, depending on the outcome of running the synthetic transaction. An example for the Local Mail Flow transaction type is shown below:

You can also see synthetic transactions (represented by the perspective icon that looks like a pair of glasses) in the diagram view for a Mailbox server, as shown in the following screen shot:

The mail flow state view in the console shows the state of all mail flow synthetic transactions. An example of a state view for a Mailbox server is shown below:

By default, the management pack runs a local mail flow synthetic transaction on each agent-managed Exchange Server 2007 Mailbox server. The synthetic transaction ensures that the server can contact a Hub Transport server in its site and that the Hub Transport server can successfully deliver the mail. In the console, under Monitoring, the Mail Flow folder provides performance views for cross-organization latency, local latency, and remote latency.