Microsoft 1 - page 104

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.096

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 third-party solution provider. However, it

is important to have these relationships already in place to ensure swift response times

when required.

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.

Contents

Main ii Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Capacity and Availability Management 11 Change and Configuration Management 37 Chapter 4 Enterprise Monitoring 53 Chapter 5 Protection 71 Chapter 6 Glossary 97 Support 89 Page Page Page Introduction Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) Page How to Use This Guide Efficiency, Continuity, and Security Figure 1.2 Efficiency Continuity Security Chapter Outlines Planning and Deployment Service Level Agreements Features Performance Recovery Support Related Topics Page Capacity and Availability Management Capacity Management Page Page Availability Management Service Hours Service Availability Minimizing System Failures Decreasing Single Points of Failure Increasing the Reliability of Exchange 2000 Minimizing System Recovery Time Performance Tuning Making Changes to the Registry No Performance Optimizer Optimizable Features Tuning Considerations Upgrading from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2000 Tuning the Message Transfer Agent (MTA) Tuning SMTP Transport Mailroot Directory Location SMTP File Handles Page Store and ESE Tuning Online Store Maintenance Online Backups Choosing the Correct Maintenance Strategy Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) Heaps Store-Database Cache Size Page Log Buffers Tuning Active Directory Integration Page Tuning Outlook Web Access (OWA) Page Hardware Upgrades Page Change and Configuration Management Prerequisites Change Management Defining Change Type Step 1 Request for Change Is Submitted to Change Manager Step 2 Change Manager Assesses the RFC Step 3 Change Is Passed to IT Executive Committee for Approval Step 4 Change Is Passed to the Change Advisory Board for Scheduling Step 5 Change Is Passed to the Change Owner Step 6 Change Process Evaluation Minor and Standard Changes Scripting Minor and Standard Changes Security Software Control and Distribution Documentation Configuration Management Tools for Configuration Management Configuration Management and Change Management Configuration Items Page Page Page Defining Configuration Items Configuration Management and Exchange Maintaining the Configuration Management Database Change Management Ownership Security Backup Exchange System Policies Administering System Policies Page Enterprise Monitoring Prerequisites Performance Monitoring System Monitor Exchange 2000 Objects and Counters to Monitor Service or Resource Performance Object Information Store Counters SMTP Server MSExchangeMTA and MSExchangeMTAConnections MSExchangeIM Virtual Servers MSExchangeAL Windows 2000 Objects and Counters to Monitor Table 4.2 Subjects and Associated Objects and Counters Subsystem Object Counter Exchange Comments Subsystem Object Counter Exchange Comments Centralized Monitoring Event Monitoring Event Viewer Log Files Centralized Event Monitoring Availability Monitoring Monitoring and Status Tool Adding Services to the Default Configuration Monitoring Resources Notifications Status Disabling Server Monitoring Centralized Availability Monitoring Client Monitoring Page Page Protection Chapter Start Point Chapter End Point Protection Against Hacking Firewall Operations Maintaining Firewall Availability Ensuring That Only the Correct Traffic Passes Through the Firewall Monitoring Against Hacker Intrusion Dealing With Security Breaches Anti-Virus Measures Staying Current Dealing With Virus Infection Blocking Attachments at the Client Page Disaster Recovery Procedures Backing Up Page Offline Backup Disk Imaging Restoring Recovering Individual Messages Recovering Lost Mailboxes Recovering Exchange Stores and Storage Groups Full Exchange Server Recovery Recovering Exchange After Active Directory Failure Alternate Server Recovery Recovery Testing Page Page Support Providing Support for End Users Reducing End User Support Costs Page Problem Reporting Dealing with User Problems Notifying Users Exchange Problem Management Page Page Glossary