Under the heading "Thinking about it a bit more after hitting the "send" button", I had in fact meant that we don't use IMAP. I apologize for any confusion.
To monitor Exchange we generally do these checks. >From outside the network: SMTP Comm SMTP (TCP) on port 25 to the inbound mail host to verify it is accepting mail, Inbound Port Connector (TCP) on port 80 to verify that OWA is working, >From inside the network: Is NTService : MSExchangeIS running (duh), We also watch the performance counter Perfmon (MSExchangeIS,VM Largest Block Size,) and alert when it goes below 32MB. (for more info see MS KB article 325044) In some cases we do a "belt and suspenders" system and have SA watch the SMTP and WWW services running on the Exchange server, but it really does not add any value. In my experience, if the TCP connections fail, but the LAN/WAN connections are up, that tells you all you need to know. We also watch disk space (duh) on the exchange systems. There are certain conditions that can result in an unnatural explosion in the generation of log files. If this goes undetected and you run out of disk space, bad things happen. David -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jeff Wright Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 7:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [SA-list] Exchange as mailserver? Thinking about it a bit more after hitting the "send" button (dontcha hate that?), an LDAP query would be more for Active Directory than Exchange, although there is probably a way to bring Exchange into the mix this way. Initiating a quick, anonymous SMTP session (HELO >> MAIL FROM: >> RCPT TO: etc...) might work, tho' not a MAPI solution per se, but you would get a better picture of Exchange's health than you can currently. ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Jeff Wright Sent: Tue 5/24/2005 5:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [SA-list] Exchange as mailserver? MAPI is the Outlook/Exchange protocol; you may be thinking of IMAP, which Exchange also can use for non-MAPI clients (everything else, including OS X's Entourage, unfortunately). I use a combination of checks against the SMTP and Information Store services for Exchange. Not perfect, but it works. An LDAP query would be better. The anti-spam product I use, XWall, has an LDAP query vbs script that checks for valid accounts (to weed out non-valid account spam, but still has a governor to protect against directory harvesting). It validates against a pre-set account as a test on startup. Something like that, akin to the SQL Server db logon SA query, would be nice to have and be a better SA check than what I currently employ. If it doesn't return against the query, then it's dead, Jim. The beauty is that an LDAP query should work for more than just Exchange. ________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of David Webster Sent: Tue 5/24/2005 5:26 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [SA-list] Exchange as mailserver? Dirk, All of our customers and all of our monitored systems (a subset) are Exchange. Mostly 2003 with a few 2000. We migrated the last 5.5 system a few months ago. Not quite sure if/how we would use a MAPI check. We use MAPI and POP in very few environments. Those protocols are not even enabled on our servers. 99% of the machines that connect to the Exchange servers run Outlook and use the native Outlook/Exchange protocols, whatever that is. (some witch's brew of RPC I imagine.) As for getting it to work, that's up to you, but both Blackberry Enterprise server and Veritas Backup Exec can talk to Exchange mailboxes. Perhaps examining how those apps do it would prove illuminating. I know in each case there is a specific account that you designate for the software to use when connecting to the mailboxes. That account has to have certain rights that are granted to that account during installation/configuration of the application. Hope this helps. David -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dirk Bulinckx Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 4:15 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [SA-list] Exchange as mailserver? The idea would indeed be to be version (of Exchange) independent. It would be something like the SMTP2POP3 addon except then that it would use MAPI instead of POP3 and optionaly also MAPI instead of SMTP. My first concern is not to get mapi to work, that's the easy part, but to get mapi to work as user_1 while Servers Alive is running as a different users (for example as service using the SYSTEM account) Dirk. Doesn't Servers Alive deserve the "PEOPLE's CHOICE AWARD."? Vote for Servers Alive on http://www.siafvoting.com/pca/index.asp Thanks to you the users of Servers Alive we were able to win the SunBelt Target Award in 2002 and 2004. And this year (2005) they are again hosting this award. Help Servers Alive win it this year too and vote on http://www.sunbelt-software.com/targetawards/welcome.cfm -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 10:10 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [SA-list] Exchange as mailserver? That would be awesome. If it's a mapi check running from SA, it would just be a 'client' to the EX server, so it wouldn't matter what version, etc you are on, right? Would be a great option!! -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dirk Bulinckx Posted At: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 2:11 PM Posted To: Servers Alive mailing list Conversation: [SA-list] Exchange as mailserver? Subject: [SA-list] Exchange as mailserver? Hi, Is it correct to assume that a lot of you are using Exchange as mail server? And that a version of SMTP2POP3 that supports MAPI as send/retrieve protocol would be helpful? Dirk. Doesn't Servers Alive deserve the "PEOPLE's CHOICE AWARD."? Vote for Servers Alive on http://www.siafvoting.com/pca/index.asp Thanks to you the users of Servers Alive we were able to win the SunBelt Target Award in 2002 and 2004. And this year (2005) they are again hosting this award. Help Servers Alive win it this year too and vote on http://www.sunbelt-software.com/targetawards/welcome.cfm To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive To unsubscribe from a list, send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] With the following in the body of the message: unsubscribe SAlive
