Configure Disk Monitoring

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Applies To: Exchange Server, Operations Manager 2007 R2

This section describes how to configure Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 disk monitoring. There are two aspects to this: disabling disk monitoring from the Windows Server Operating System Management Pack and configuring the appropriate thresholds for your environment.

Exchange 2007 disk monitoring discovers the following disks (mount points are also discovered as Exchange 2007 disks):

  • Disks that store an Exchange 2007 mailbox database file

  • Disks that store an Exchange 2007 mailbox log file

  • Disks that store Exchange 2007 Hub or Edge Queue files

The Exchange 2007 disks are implemented as classes. This way, you can easily configure disk monitoring for multiple disks of the same type. For a graphical representation of Exchange 2007 management pack classes and relationships, see Classes.

Disabling Disk Monitoring from the Windows Server Operating System Management Pack

It is likely that you are also monitoring disk usage using the Windows Server Operating System Management Pack. This approach will cause duplication of disk space alerts unless you disable this monitoring for the Exchange disks.

Note

You should not disable this monitoring if you are delegating all Exchange monitoring (including Exchange disk monitoring and notifications) to a separate group while at the same time monitoring disk space in general by a different group. In this case, you might want to do both base operating system and Exchange disk monitoring.

Note

You might not want to disable disk monitoring for system disks from the Windows Server Operating System Management Pack because the Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack does not discover the system disks unless the disk also contains the Mailbox database, or log or queue files.

Note

If you prefer to disable disk monitoring from the Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack instead of the Windows Server Operating System Management Pack, that is possible as well.

To disable disk monitoring for Exchange servers from the Windows Server Operating System Management Pack

  1. In the Authoring section of the console, go to the Monitors node.

  2. Click Change Scope, and the Scope Management Pack Objects by target(s) dialog box appears.

  3. In the Monitors pane, in the Look for field, type Logical Disk, and then click Find Now. Select logical disk classes from all operating system versions where you are running Exchange 2007 servers (for example, Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Logical Disk and Windows Server 2008 Logical Disk). Click OK.

  4. Expand Windows Server 2003 Logical Disk, expand Entity Health, and then expand Availability to see the Logical Disk Availability and Logical Disk Free Space monitors.

  5. Right-click the Logical Disk Free Space monitor, click Overrides, click Override the Monitor, and then click For a group.

  6. Select the Exchange 2007 Computer Group, and click OK.

  7. In the Override Properties dialog box, set the Enabled parameter to False, and then choose a destination management pack.

  8. Perform the same procedure for the enabled monitors under Performance (Average Disk Seconds Per Read, Average Disk Seconds Per Transfer, Average Disk Seconds Per Write).

  9. Repeat the same procedure for the Logical Disk Availability Monitor as well as logical disk monitors belonging to other operating system versions.

Note

If you want to keep monitoring system disks on Exchange 2007 servers, create a group containing all system disks on Exchange 2007 servers, and then enable the monitors in the previous procedure for that group. Be aware that alerts for the system disks on Exchange 2007 servers in this case will be raised in the context of the Windows Server on which the Exchange 2007 server is running, not in the context of the Exchange server.

Configuring Exchange 2007 Disk Monitoring

This section describes how to configure the appropriate thresholds for your environment

To configure Exchange 2007 Disk Monitoring

  1. In the Operations console, click Authoring and then click Monitors.

  2. Click the Scope button, and ensure that View all targets is selected. In the Look for field, type Disk. Select Exchange 2007 Mailbox Database Disk, Exchange 2007 Mailbox Log Disk, and Exchange 2007 Queue Disk, and then click OK.

  3. For Exchange 2007 Mailbox Database Disk, expand Availability to see the Exchange 2007 MDB Disk Free Space Monitor. Right-click it, and click Overrides, click Override the Monitor, and then click For all objects of type: Exchange 2007 Mailbox Database Disk.

  4. Examine the monitor parameters. This monitor works in the same way as Windows Server operating system disk monitoring, except that it handles only Exchange 2007 disks. Note that you can set a megabyte warning or error threshold, as well as a percentage free space threshold. By applying overrides to this monitor, you can do it once for all Exchange 2007 disks with mailbox databases on them.

    Important

    This monitor raises an alert only if both the megabyte and percentage thresholds are exceeded.

    Note

    Ensure that you save your overrides in a separate management pack.

  5. Perform the same steps for the disk monitors for the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Log Disk and Exchange 2007 Queue Disk classes.

Note

The overrides for disk free space monitors must be in order (for example, the warning threshold must be greater than the error threshold).