96Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0
Do not simply rely upon your own knowledge base. The Microsoft Knowledge Base (avail- able with TechNet or on http://support.microsoft.com) is a very useful record of support issues that have been encountered by Microsoft. If your support staff finds problems that have already been resolved in the Microsoft knowledge base, they should ensure that a reference to the corresponding article in the Microsoft knowledge base is present in their own knowledge base.
You will also find useful information in the various newsgroups and list servers available for Exchange. While the information delivered from these sources cannot be guaranteed to be accurate, it is often provides useful tips on how to deal with issues.
Event monitoring can be a very useful source of information to Service Desk staff trying to resolve a problem. If you do encounter problems with an area of Exchange, the Service Desk staff may wish to increase the monitoring level for that area of Exchange. Individual events now have hyperlinks associated with them, to allow your Service Desk staff to find out more information about the particular event. Event monitoring is covered in more detail in Chapter 4.
Education of the Service Desk staff is very important too. If they are aware only of Exchange issues, it can be difficult for them to deal with many problems themselves, and also difficult to route problems accordingly. You should ensure that your support staff has a complete picture of Exchange and its interdependencies.
For most organizations, it is not economically sound to have all Exchange 2000 Server expertise directly employed within the company. Normally the higher levels of support are contracted out. This could be to Microsoft or a
Summary
Exchange 2000 Server, with its large number of interdependencies, large user base in organizations, and sheer importance to most of those organizations is a great challenge to support effectively. However, if you do provide effective support, the many improvements in the product’s reliability can allow your users and support staff to gain the real benefits offered by the product.
