Microsoft 1 Capacity and Availability Management

2

Capacity and AvailabilityManagement

Introduction

In the vast majority of cases, the load on your Exchange 2000 Server computers will increase

over time. Companies increase in size, and as they do, the number of Exchange users

increases. Existing users tend to use the messaging environment more over time, not only

for traditional e-mail, but also for other collaborative purposes (for example, voicemail,

fax, instant messaging, video conferencing). The load on the messaging environment will

also vary over the course of the day (for example, there may be a morning peak) and could

vary seasonally in response to increased business activity.

The aim of your operations team should be to minimize the effect of the increased load on

your users, at all times keeping within the requirements set by your service level agreement

(SLA). You will need to ensure that existing servers running Exchange are able to cope with

the load placed upon them (and upgrade hardware if appropriate).

Another important requirement of the operations team is to minimize system downtime

at all times. The level of downtime your organization is prepared to tolerate needs to be

clearly set out in the SLA, separated into scheduled and unscheduled downtime. Many

organizations can cope perfectly well with scheduled downtime, but unscheduled down-

time almost always needs to be kept to a minimum.

Exchange 2000 is predominantly self-tuning, but there are areas where tuning your servers

running Exchange will result in an improvement in performance. It is important to identify

these areas and tune where appropriate.

Inevitably there will come a point where the load on your servers running Exchange is

such that hardware upgrades are required. If you manage this process effectively, you can

significantly reduce the costs associated with upgrading.

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