Exchange Management Pack guide for MOM 2005
I noticed this morning that the Exchange Server Management Pack (EMP) guide for MOM2005 has been published to the web. The document gives a comprehensive walk through of how to set up MOM to manage Exchange which is useful for Exchange admins who may not have much experience of MOM, and MOM admins who may not have much experience of Exchange.
Topics like using IIS lockdown, preventing SMTP anonymous relay and configuring SSL are covered in detail, as the EMP will genreate alerts if the monitoring environment is not secured. Clusters can be monitored too, as the EMP components automatically detect a clustered environment. The scripts run on active cluster nodes identifying virtual servers running on those nodes. Passive notes also have events generated by the scripts, namely:
· Check HeapDeCommitFreeBlockThreshold Registry Key
· Check 'services to monitor' registry key
· Collect Operating System Server Information
· Publish ExMP Data
· Verify IIS Lockdown was run
· Verify required Windows hotfixes
Best practices in configuration are also covered in detail (this document is 130 pages long) and I think that it's a really comprehensive guide to managing your Exchange organisation, and goes nicely hand in hand with the Exchange Best Practice Analyzer tool currently on the web