Microsoft 1 - Manuals

vii Content Lead Andrew Mason – Microsoft Prescriptive Architecture Group Key Authors Paul Slater – ContentMasterKent Sarff – Microsoft Consulting ServicesSasha Frljanic – Microsoft Consulting Services Reviewers Jon LeCroy – Microsoft ITGThomas Applegate – Microsoft ITGErik Ashby – Microsoft Exchang...

Chapter 1: Introduction 3 It is not essential to be a MOF expert to understand and use this guide, but a good under-standing of MOF principles will assist you in managing and maintaining a reliable, avail-able, and stable operations environment. If you wish to learn more about MOF and how it can ass...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 4 Figure 1.2 Exchange 2000 Operations divided into groups Performance TuningExchange System PoliciesCapacity Management Efficiency Continuity Security UPSRecovery TestingAvailability MonitoringAvailablity Management Storage Management Hardware U...

Chapter 1: Introduction 5 This guide covers all three areas described above. Although the chapters are structuredaccording to Microsoft operations principles, you will find information about all of theseareas in the guide. Chapter Outlines This guide consists of the following chapters, each of which...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 6 ◆ Availability monitoring ◆ Proactive monitoring ◆ Availability prediction Chapter 5 – Protection To protect your Exchange environment from failure, you need good protection fromintrusion and attack, along with a documented and tested disaster...

Chapter 1: Introduction 7 to be created at this stage, because waiting until the system is live could be too late. Theoperations team should be using the planning phase (and in some cases the deploymentphase) to test procedures that are defined, such as those for disaster recovery. Planning and depl...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 8 Performance Here you show the performance you would expect from each of the previously mentionedfeatures. This would include some or all of the following: ◆ Service availability (this may be given across all services or on a service-by-service...

Chapter 1: Introduction 9 Summary This chapter has introduced you to this guide and summarized the other chapters in it.It has also provided brief descriptions of both service level agreements and planning anddeployment. Now that you understand the organization of the guide, you can decidewhether to...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations — Version 1.0 12 Chapter Sections This chapter covers the following procedures: ◆ Capacity management ◆ Availability management ◆ Performance tuning ◆ Hardware upgrades After reading this chapter, you will be familiar with the requirements for capacity andavailabil...

Chapter 2: Capacity and Availability Management 15 To deal with this problem, you should continually monitor available disk space on yourservers running Exchange. If the RAID array containing the stores gets close to half full, analert should be sent indicating the problem, and that the Exchange Dat...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations — Version 1.0 16 Of course, just because you have allowed for a certain amount of downtime per server permonth, this does not mean that you have to use it, and in most cases you will not. On theother hand, just because you haven’t performed offline maintenance one ...

Chapter 2: Capacity and Availability Management 17 Decreasing Single Points of Failure You can maintain availability in Exchange 2000, even in the event of a failure, providedyou ensure that it is not a single point of failure. In some areas, such as database corrup-tion, it is not possible to elimi...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations — Version 1.0 18 the disk subsystem becomes a single point of failure once that hot spare is invoked. Ifyou have robust systems in place, you must ensure that any failures are resolved promptly.Make sure that you have notification and monitoring procedures in place...

Chapter 2: Capacity and Availability Management 19 One area where you can guard against problems is database errors. Database errors can becaused by a number of factors, but they are typically hardware related. You will be able tominimize these by doing the following: ◆ Ensure that your hardware is ...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations — Version 1.0 20 While obtaining the best performance from your Exchange 2000 computers is always animportant goal, it is crucial to be cautious in your tuning changes. You should track allalterations in case you make a change that inadvertently reduces performance...

Chapter 2: Capacity and Availability Management 21 and “Edit Registry Information” Help topics in Regedt32.exe. Note that you should backup the registry before you edit it. If you are running the Microsoft Windows NT® orMicrosoft Windows® 2000 operating system, you should also update your emergencyr...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations — Version 1.0 22 Tuning Considerations The efficiency and capacity of Microsoft Exchange 2000 depends on the administrator’schoices of server and storage hardware, and on the installation’s topology. These should bechosen based on expected types and levels of usage...

Chapter 2: Capacity and Availability Management 23 servers. These areas are beyond the scope of the Exchange 2000 Operations Guide. If youneed to tune your Exchange 2000 MTA, consult the deployment section of the Exchange2000 Server Upgrade Series, available on the following Web site: http://www.mic...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations — Version 1.0 24 8. Navigate to the following path: Configuration Container\ CN=Configuration,CN=Services, CN=Microsoft Exchange, CN=<organization>,CN=Administrative Groups, CN=<admin group>, CN=Servers, CN=<server>,CN=Protocols, CN=SMTP, CN=1. 9....

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations — Version 1.0 26 reduced to 10,000, SMTP will refuse any inbound mail after the queue reaches 10,000messages. You may need to alter the following registry entry if the Exchange 2000 computer isrunning out of memory because the number of incoming messages is too gre...

Chapter 2: Capacity and Availability Management 27 scenario, the online maintenance occurs during the night (by default) when very few usersare logged on, so the load on the Active Directory servers should be very low. The extradomain controller load created by online maintenance should not be a pro...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations — Version 1.0 28 It is critical that the backup time for any database within a storage group does not conflictwith the maintenance times of any database within the same storage group. If it does, backupwill terminate the online defragmentation portion of the store ...

Chapter 2: Capacity and Availability Management 29 Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) Heaps When Exchange 2000 is installed on servers with more than four processors, you mightnotice high virtual memory usage by the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) multi-heap. Thiscan lead to performance problems, espec...

Chapter 2: Capacity and Availability Management 31 7. Click Set after changing the Edit Attribute field for the attribute and then click OK. 8. Close the ADSI Edit tool by closing the MMC console application. 9. Wait for Active Directory replication to replicate this new value throughout the forest(...

Chapter 2: Capacity and Availability Management 35 Hardware Upgrades Exactly when hardware upgrades are required depends on the results of your capacityplanning. If you plan your capacity well, you will be able to predict when hardware upgradesare required, which is particularly important when there...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 38 Prerequisites By now you have defined a set of acceptable service level agreements for your Exchangeenvironment and you understand the concepts of availability management that werediscussed in Chapter 2, “Capacity and Availability Management....

Chapter 3: Change and Configuration Management 39 Change can be broadly categorized into four groups, each requiring its own style ofmanagement. The groups are: ◆ Major change. Significantly impacts the IT environment, and requires major resourcesto plan, build, and implement (for example, upgrading...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 40 Step 2 – Change Manager Assesses the RFC The change manager receives the RFC and records it in the change management log. Themanager examines the RFC, checking to see if it is a complete and practical proposal. If inany way the proposal is de...

Chapter 3: Change and Configuration Management 41 change. In this case, expertise with Exchange and hardware is very important. In fact, thechange manager may decide to appoint an OEM vendor representative to the changeadvisory board. The change advisory board determines the hardware upgrade schedul...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 42 Figure 3.1 The Change Management Process Minor and Standard Changes The advantage of minor and standard changes is that individuals with less authority can bepre-assigned the permissions to perform them. This is perfectly fine, because the ch...

Chapter 3: Change and Configuration Management 43 the user in the appropriate Windows 2000 groups and create the Exchange 2000 mailboxwith the appropriate settings for that user. Over time, your team will build a set of custom tools that are used frequently to administerstandard changes. Those tools...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 44 schedule information, and work orders. It is the responsibility of the change initiator,change manager, and change owner to ensure that you have appropriate documentationabout the change. Change management should also work closely with config...

Chapter 3: Change and Configuration Management 45 Another example is hardware tracking. Imagine that your hardware vendor releases a newfirmware version for the standard network adapter that you use in some or all of yourservers. If you track firmware versions of each network adapter, and the relati...

Chapter 3: Change and Configuration Management 47 Configuration Management Relationships Many of the main benefits of configuration management come from the relationshipsbetween the configuration items that are defined in the structure of the configurationmanagement database. Getting these relations...

Chapter 3: Change and Configuration Management 49 Defining Configuration Items When defining configuration items you need to decide how deeply you want to go inrecording the them. Too many configuration items makes the relationships too difficult tomanage and costs start to increase. There are stron...

Chapter 3: Change and Configuration Management 51 Security Security is a vital component of configuration management. The only way in which youcan maintain control over your configuration and ensure that the configuration manage-ment database is accurate is by ensuring that only authorized personnel...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 54 Performance Monitoring Performance Monitoring is the monitoring of existing system(s) to ensure that optimumuse is made of the hardware resources, and that agreed performance levels can be main-tained. Performance Monitoring allows you to det...

Chapter 4: Enterprise Monitoring 55 Exchange 2000 Objects and Counters to Monitor Every Exchange 2000 performance object has at least one counter associated with it. Forinformation on particular counters, in Performance Monitor, click Select Counters fromList, select a counter, and then click Explai...

Chapter 4: Enterprise Monitoring 57 Information Store Counters MSExchangeIS For this object, monitor the following counters: ◆ User Count – This displays the number of people currently using the Information Store(not the number of connections). It is impossible to properly judge the performance of a...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 58 rarely greater than zero. A reading of greater than zero shows that the server is receiv-ing more messages than it can process. If this number increases steadily over time, thereis probably a problem with the Exchange Store you are trying to ...

Chapter 4: Enterprise Monitoring 59 MSExchangeIM Virtual Servers If you are running Instant Messaging in your organization, you may find that theorganization quickly becomes as reliant on Instant Messaging as it is on e-mail. It istherefore important that you monitor Instant Messaging Counters. You ...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 62 Centralized Monitoring In an enterprise environment, you can reduce operations costs dramatically if you cancapture performance data in a central location. Doing so moves the load of monitoringfrom the monitored server to the centralized serv...

Chapter 4: Enterprise Monitoring 63 Event Monitoring When Exchange 2000 Server is running smoothly, event monitoring does not seem espe-cially important. However, when performance is poor, you will quickly see the benefits ofevent monitoring. Event Viewer is a useful source of information about Exch...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 64 One of the difficulties of viewing event logs is knowing which events are more worrisomethan others. In some cases, Exchange 2000 Server issues Stop events, which record tempo-rary issues that resolve themselves in the course of time. In othe...

Chapter 4: Enterprise Monitoring 65 NetIQ AppManager contains useful features to help with Event monitoring. It detectswhether any servers have written critical error messages to the Event Log and automatesresponses to actions, including issuing SNMP traps. Availability Monitoring To meet your avail...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 66 have other Exchange services that are vital to the user experience in your environment (forexample, if Instant Messaging is used heavily in your organization). Monitoring Resources You can monitor other resources using the Monitoring and Stat...

Chapter 4: Enterprise Monitoring 67 Status The details pane of the Status container allows you to view the status of servers andconnectors in your organization. The Status container shows the following server states: ◆ Available – This shows that the server is online and all the main services are ru...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 68 Client Monitoring While it is very important to monitor the availability and performance of servers runningExchange, domain controllers, and the network, none of these directly cover one criticalarea – the experience of the Exchange end user....

5 Protection Introduction By its very nature, Exchange 2000 Server has a public face. You will be offering e-mail andother functionality to a large number of users. In many cases those users will not only beable to collaborate with other users in their own company, but also with others across theInt...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 72 Chapter Sections This chapter covers the following procedures: ◆ Protection against hacking ◆ Anti-virus measures ◆ Disaster recovery procedures ◆ Recovery testing ◆ Backup ◆ Restore Protection Against Hacking Whenever you consider protecting...

Chapter 5: Protection 73 To keep your Exchange Server computers secure, look carefully at group memberships.One of the most critical groups you should monitor is the Exchange Domain ServersGroup. Any user or computer account that is a member of the Exchange Domain Serversaccount has full control of ...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 74 operating. In a multi-firewall environment, the firewalls are generally manufactured by anumber of different vendors, which can make management issues even more complex. The responsibilities of the operations department in these circumstances...

Chapter 5: Protection 75 Source Destination Service Protocol and port Screened Subnet Internal/Private Network HTTP TCP 80 Screened Subnet Internal/Private Network RPC EP Mapper TCP 135 Screened Subnet Internal/Private Network KERBEROS TCP UDP 88 Screened Subnet Internal/Private Network LDAP TCP 389...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 76 You are likely to be protecting against viruses at several levels. These may include at thefirewall level, outside or at the SMTP Gateway, at each Exchange Server and at the clientlevel. You should of course bear in mind that non e-mail bound...

Chapter 5: Protection 77 In some cases you will receive a warning about a new virus before an update to your anti-virus software is proposed. The first thing to do here is to verify that the virus is genuine.Many problems are in fact caused by hoax virus notifications. Ensure that the virus is agenu...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 78 Blocking Attachments at the Client One of the best ways of protecting against virus infection is to block particular attach-ments from running. Attachments may be blocked at the server level, but they may also beblocked at the client. You can...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 80 Disaster Recovery Procedures Chapter 2, “Capacity and Availability Management,” examined ways of minimizingsystem failures. As mentioned there, to reduce overall downtime you need to look at howfrequently a system is down, alongside how long ...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 82 The metabase changes frequently during routine Exchange operations, so you should backup your metabase as often as you back up your server running Exchange. Successfulbackup of the metabase will prevent you from having to reconfigure settings...

Chapter 5: Protection 83 Restoring To ensure a swift restore of Exchange 2000, you will need the following items: ◆ Available Hardware. ◆ Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Exchange 2000 Server software, plus any appro-priate service packs and hot fixes. ◆ Any other required Microsoft or third-party ...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 84 Once again, you would be advised to define your SLAs so that mailbox recovery is notpossible outside the period of time you specified in the Administrator program. Whilemailbox recovery is possible outside of this time span, dependent upon yo...

Chapter 5: Protection 85 Full Exchange Server Recovery In any area where a server running Exchange is liable to fail, you will need hardware toperform the restore. Lack of redundant hardware can often be the most significant factorin downtime resulting from a full server failure. If you standardize ...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 86 However, this does not mean that an Active Directory failure makes Exchange 2000completely unusable. You should be able to recover an Exchange Organization, pro-vided you have access to information about the Exchange configuration, including ...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 90 Providing Support for End Users It is likely that almost everyone in your organization will be an e-mail user. All of thoseusers may require support at some point in time. In most environments, it is critical tomaintain service as much as pos...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 92 number of protocols supported. For example, you may choose to only support OWA as themeans of access outside the firewall. Not all of these problems are necessarily client issues. End users will be directly affected byproblems at the server l...

Microsoft Exchange 2000 Operations Guide — Version 1.0 94 If individual users have problems, it is generally inappropriate to post update informationto the intranet. In those circumstances, you should contact the user directly. If the user’se-mail client is unavailable, call or send an instant messa...

Glossary Access Control Entry – ACE An object such as a user or group that is present on an Access Control List. Access Control List – ACL A description of security permissions applied to an object, property, or resource. An ACLnormally includes membership (ACEs) and the associated actions or manipu...