"Just to monitor Exchange completely is a significant undertaking. Much less to come up with appropriate operational objectives for a given company..."
Bingo. I monitor all the Exchange services but that's not enough so I use a 3rd party tool to check round-trip functionality as well - it basically sends an email every 5 minutes to a dedicated Exchange mailbox and waits for the auto-response. If not response in x minutes (in my case 10) then I get an alert to my phone. Since it's a 3rd party externally hosted tool it does not rely on my email infrastructure to work for me to get a notice, and it alerts even if my entire network is offline. Even that is not comprehensive enough for some org's since it's not testing Activesync and other features, but it catches unelated to Exchange stuff like network, SPAM filters (Barracuda) and other items that are part of the delivery loop. Dave From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael B. Smith Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 7:18 AM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Exchange] SLAs Exchange (and Lync to a certain degree) are tough. What does "not working" mean? Does it include client workstations or does the SLA end at the perimeter of the data-center? Or does it end with your LAN? Your WAN? Does it include work-from-home? Does it include receiving email from outside? Does it include sending email to the outside? Does it include OWA? Does it include UM, POP, IMAP, EAS, and EWS? What if every single thing is "working", except you can't send email to one particular domain - is Exchange "down?" If you pushed a change to the auto-attendant this morning and it is missing part of a decision tree so you can't leave voicemail, is Exchange "down?" Does it include AV and AS? What is a false positive considered? What is a false negative considered? Definitions are important. :) Just to monitor Exchange completely is a significant undertaking. Much less to come up with appropriate operational objectives for a given company... I've been through this process before with a couple of largish organizations. From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jonathan Raper Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 9:35 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: RE: [Exchange] SLAs What are the business objectives driving the request for SLAs? Does the business have specific objectives, expectations, or requirements that they're trying to meet or was this just an open-ended "we want you to come up with SLA's for Exchange"? Jonathan Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Candee Date:05/14/2015 9:31 AM (GMT-05:00) To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [Exchange] SLAs Morning! I've been tasked with creating SLAs for our Exchange environment. Does anyone have a favorite template I could use as a jumping off point? Thanks, Candee Attention: Information contained in this message and or attachments is intended only for the recipient(s) named above and may contain confidential and or privileged material that is protected under State or Federal law. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or action taken on it is prohibited. If you believe you have received this email in error, please contact the sender, delete this email and destroy all copies.
