SCOM: #Exchange 2010 SP1 MP is here
Today the updated management pack for Exchange 2010 with support for SP1 is published. It can be downloaded from the MS Download site:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7150bfed-64a4-42a4-97a2-07048cca5d23
The new version is: 14.02.0071.0
Be sure to download also the explanatory doc which holds all the changes to this management pack. Some great info in there!
Download the correct file from the site:
- Exchange2010ManagementPackForOpsMgr2007-EN-i386.msi
- Exchange2010ManagementPackForOpsMgr2007-EN-x64.msi
This is not a standard straight forward management pack but requires to install a Exchange Correlation Engine.
This Correlation engine is basically a windows service which uses the Operations Manager SDK to first retrieve the health model and then process the stat change events. The correlation engine is capable of checking the health status before raising an alert. This significantly reduces the alerts generated as the engine is logically looking at the relationship between the alerts and closing them when they are caused by other alerts which were caused by the underlying issue.
The correlation engine is by default enabled. Be cautious when you are using helpdesk tools which don’t like events to be closed automatically.
Changes in This Update
The Exchange 2010 SP1 version of the Exchange 2010 Management Pack includes significant improvements beyond those included in the RTM version of the Exchange 2010 Management Pack. The following list includes some of the new features and updates:
- Capacity planning and performance reports New reports dig deep into the performance of individual servers and provide detailed information about how much capacity is used in each site.
- SMTP and remote PowerShell availability report The management pack now includes two new availability reports for SMTP client connections and management end points.
- New Test-SMTPConnectivity synthetic transaction In addition to the inbound mail connectivity tasks for protocols such as Outlook Web App, Outlook, IMAP, POP, and Exchange ActiveSync, the Management Pack now includes SMTP-connectivity monitoring for outbound mail from IMAP and POP clients. For information about how to enable this feature, see Optional Configurations.
- New Test-ECPConnectivity view Views for the Exchange Control Panel test task are now included in the monitoring tree.
- Cross-premises mail flow monitoring and reporting The Management Pack includes new mail flow monitoring and reporting capabilities for customers who use our hosted service.
- Improved Content Indexing and Mailbox Disk Space monitoring New scripts have been created to better monitor context indexing and mailbox disk space. These new scripts enable automatic repair of indexes and more accurately report of disk space issues.
- The ability to disable Automatic Alert Resolution in environments that include OpsMgr connectors When you disable Automatic Alert Resolution, the Correlation Engine won’t automatically resolve alerts. This lets you use your support ticketing system to manage your environment. For information about how to disable this feature, see Optional Configurations.
- Several other updates and improvements were also added to this version of the Management Pack, including the following.
- · Suppression of alerts when the alerts only occur occasionally was added to many monitors.
- · Most of the event monitors in the Exchange 2010 Management Pack are automatically reset by the Correlation Engine. Automatic reset was added to those event monitors so that issues aren’t missed the next time they occur. For a list of the event monitors that are not reset automatically, see Understanding Alert Correlation.
- · Monitoring was added for processes that crash repeatedly.
- · Additional performance monitoring was added for Outlook Web App.
- · Monitoring of Active Directory access was improved.
- · Monitoring of anonymous calendar sharing was added.
- · Reliability of database offline alerts was improved.
- · Monitoring for the database engine (ESE) was added.
I’ll be playing with this MP shortly and post my findings.
Source: Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack Guide.doc