Nagios Support Forum

Is anyone out there successfully monitoring Exchange 2007 that would like to provide some insight on how to set up properly? Thank you.

Iv'e had successes with using SNMP Informant. We understand and the Windows Agent will directly support Exchange.

@jwalters - we use the nsclient++ on the exchange servers and here is the command that we use to check them: Hope that helps a little.
D

Thanks afamily, I will try this.

jwalters,

One way that we are monitoring our 2k7 servers is by Performance Counters. There are a number of Microsoft best practice lists of what to monitor out on the web. I've taken these and put together what we use to monitor our Exchange 2007 servers. You can cut and paste each one into the Windows Server Wizard under Performance Counters. You'll have to go back and add them to each device a few times as there are quite a few. They are working out very well for us. You might want to tweak the Warning and Critical values a bit as I've left most of them at the default levels.

Performance Counter
\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Aggregate Delivery Queue Length (All Queues)

Display Name
Msgs Queued All Queues

Counter Output Format
Msgs Queued for Delivery - All Queues = %.f

Warning Value
200

Critical Value
250

Shows the number of messages queued for delivery in all queues.
Should be less than 3,000 and not more than 5,000.

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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Active Remote Delivery Queue Length

Active Remote Delivery Queue Length

Remote Delivery Queue Length is %.f

200

250

Shows the number of messages in the active remote delivery queues.
Should be less than 250 at all times.

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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Active Mailbox Delivery Queue Length

Active Mailbox Delivery Queue Length

Active Mailbox Delivery Queue Length is %.f

200

250

Shows the number of messages in the active mailbox queues.
Should be less than 250 at all times.


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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Submission Queue Length

Submission Queue Length

Submission Queue Length is %.f

75

100


Shows the number of messages in the submission queue.
Should not exceed 100.

If sustained high values are occurring, investigate Active Directory and Mailbox servers for bottlenecks or performance-related issues.


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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Active Non-Smtp Delivery Queue Length

Active Non-Smtp Delivery Queue Length

Active Non-Smtp Delivery Queue Length is %.f

200

250

Shows the number of messages in the Drop directory that is used by a Foreign connector.
Should be less than 250 at all times.


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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Retry Mailbox Delivery Queue Length

Retry Mailbox Delivery Queue Length

Retry Mailbox Delivery Queue Length is %.f

75

100

Shows the number of messages in a retry state attempting to deliver a message to a remote mailbox.
Should be less than 100 at all times.

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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Retry Non-Smtp Delivery Queue Length

Retry Non-Smtp Delivery Queue Length

Retry Non-Smtp Delivery Queue Length is %.f

75

100

Shows the number of messages in a retry state in the non-Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) gateway delivery queues.
Should not exceed 100.

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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Retry Remote Delivery Queue Length

Retry Remote Delivery Queue Length

Retry Remote Delivery Queue Length is %.f

75

100

Shows the number of messages in a retry state in the remote delivery queues.
Should not exceed 100.

We recommend that you check the next hop to determine the causes for queuing.

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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Unreachable Queue Length

Unreachable Queue Length

Unreachable Queue Length is %.f

75

100

Shows the number of messages in the Unreachable queue.
Should not exceed 100.


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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Largest Delivery Queue Length

Largest Delivery Queue Length

Largest Delivery Queue Length is %.f

150

200

Shows the number of messages in the largest delivery queues.
Should be less than 200 for the Edge Transport and Hub Transport server roles.


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\\MSExchangeTransport Queues(_total)\Poison Queue Length

Poison Queue Length

Poison Queue Length is %.f

1

2

Shows the number of messages in the poison message queue.
Should be 0 at all times.


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\\MSExchangeIS Mailbox(_Total)\Messages Queued for Submission

Messages Queued for Submission

Messages Queued for Submission = %.f

45

50

Shows the current number of submitted messages that are not yet processed by the transport layer.
Should be below 50 at all times.

Should not be sustained for more than 15 minutes.

This may indicate that there are connectivity issues to the transport servers or that backpressure is occurring.

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\\MSExchangeIS Public(_Total)\Messages Queued for Submission

Messages Queued for Submission - Public

Messages Queued for Submission - Public = %.f

20

25

Shows the current number of submitted messages that are not yet processed by the transport layer.
Should be less than 20 at all times.

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\\MSExchangeIS Mailbox(*)\Slow Findrow Rate

Slow Findrow Rate

Slow Findrow Rate is %.f

7

10

Shows the rate at which the slower FindRow needs to be used in the mailbox store.
Should be no more than 10 for any specific mailbox store.

Higher values indicate applications are crawling or searching mailboxes, which is affecting server performance. These include desktop search engines, customer relationship management (CRM), or other third-party applications.

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\\MSExchangeIS Mailbox(*)\Search Task Rate

Search Task Rate

Search Task Rate = %.f per second

7

10

Shows the number of search tasks created per second.
Should be less than 10 at all times.

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\\MSExchange Search Indices(*)\ Average Document Indexing Time

Average Document Indexing Time

Average Document Indexing Time = %.f milliseconds

25

30

Shows the average, in milliseconds, of how long it takes to index documents.
Should be less than 30 seconds at all time.


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\\MSExchangeIS\RPC Requests

RPC Requests

RPC Requests = %.f

65

70

Indicates the overall RPC requests that are currently executing within the information store process.

The maximum value in Exchange 2007 is 500 RPC requests that can execute at any designated time before the information store starts rejecting any new connections from clients.
Should be below 70 at all times.


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\\MSExchangeIS\RPC Averaged Latency

RPC Averaged Latency

RPC Averaged Latency is %.f milliseconds

20

25

Indicates the RPC latency, in milliseconds, averaged for all operations in the last 1,024 packets.

For information about how clients are affected when overall server RPC averaged latencies increase, see RPC Client Throttling.
Should not be higher than 25 ms on average.

To determine if certain protocols are causing overall RPC latencies, monitor MSExchangeIS Client (*)\RPC Average Latency to separate latencies based on client protocol.

Cross-reference MSExchangeIS\RPC Client Backoff/sec to ensure higher latencies are not causing client throttling.


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\\MSExchangeIS\RPC Num. of Slow Packets

RPC Num. of Slow Packets

RPC Num. of Slow Packets = %.f

1

3

Shows the number of RPC packets in the past 1,024 packets that have latencies longer than 2 seconds.
Should be less than 1 on average, and should be less than 3 at all times.

Wow this is fantastic! Thank you!

Hi plasma50 - I noticed there's various queues, is there a way to be alerted when someone tries to send an email that's over a specific size?

jwalters,

you asked "if there is a way to be alerted when someone tries to send an email that's over a specific size?"

I don't think you can do it with the counters that we are currently using. There might be other Counters in the Best Practices that might be able to do it. I like the idea. I'll do some checking...

This is where I've gotten most of my Perfomance Counter information:

Monitoring Without System Center Operations Manager
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... G.80).aspx

There might be something in there that you could use to monitor file sizes...

Okay, let me try that again... The last link won't work. Use this one but put on the http:// header on it.

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201720(EXCHG.80).aspx