New/Updated MP: Exchange 2013 MP Reborn

So far we’ve seen very bad implementations of Exchange Management Pack for SCOM. Even with Exchange 2013 I thought will be initial version and updates will be released regularly to improve it but that didn’t happen for a long time. Until now. Microsoft released an updated version of the Exchange 2013 Management Pack. I would not just call it updated but significantly improved. I think this is the version for monitoring Exchange 2013 that we’ve been waiting for. Of course there always be room for improvements . Anyway if you are using Exchange 2013 and SCOM I would suggest you to get on this version as soon as possible. Let me give you an overview of some of the major changes:

• A lot of performance collection rules
• Discovery of components
• New views
• New Group
• Dashbaords
• Diagram
• Reports

Let’s go now into little more detail.

The following performance collection rules are now present:

Exchange 2013 Server
o    Exchange 2013 Database: I/O Database Reads Average Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Database: I/O Database Writes Average Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Database: I/O Log Reads Average Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Database: I/O Log Writes Average Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Database: Page Fault Stalls/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Average Disk sec/Read
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Average Disk sec/Write
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Disk Free Space (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Disk Reads/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Disk Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Disk Writes/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Transport Queue Database Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Client Connections Count
o    Exchange 2013 Server: ActiveSync Pending
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Avg. Authentication Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: E2E Deliver <=90sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: E2E Latency Percentile 95
o    Exchange 2013 Server: E2E Latency Send to External <=90sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: EWS Response Time (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: LDAP Search Time (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Messages Received/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Messages Sent/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Outstanding Proxy Requests
o    Exchange 2013 Server: HTTP Proxy Failure Rate (%)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: HTTP Proxy Requests/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Queues by Type Count
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Queue Length
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Requests/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Avg RPC Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: SMTP Bytes Received/Sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: SMTP Bytes Sent/Sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: SMTP Connections (Current)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Store Messages Submitted/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Server: System Total Memory (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: CPU Utilization (%)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Private Memory Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Server: Private Memory Size (%)

Exchange 2013 Windows Service
o    Exchange 2013 Windows Service: CPU Utilization (%)
o    Exchange 2013 Windows Service: Pool Non Paged Memory Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Windows Service: Pool Paged Memory Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Windows Service: Private Memory Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Windows Service: Private Memory Size (%)
Exchange 2013 IIS Application Pool
o    Exchange 2013 IIS App Pool: Active Requests
o    Exchange 2013 IIS App Pool: Private Memory Size (%)
o    Exchange 2013 IIS App Pool: CPU Utilization (%)
o    Exchange 2013 IIS App Pool: Pool Non Paged Memory Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 IIS App Pool: Pool Paged Memory Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 IIS App Pool: Private Memory Size (MB)
Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database Copy
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: Available Space (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: Index Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: I/O Database Reads Average Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: I/O Database Writes Average Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: I/O Log Reads Average Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: I/O Log Writes Average Latency (ms)
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: Transaction Log Available Space (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: Transaction Log Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: Database Page Fault Stalls/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database: Database Size (MB)

Exchange 2013 Organization
o    Exchange 2013 Organization Synthetic: Mailbox Count
o    Exchange 2013 Organization Synthetic: Client Connections Count
o    Exchange 2013 Organization Synthetic: E2E Deliver <=90sec
o    Exchange 2013 Organization Synthetic: E2E Latency Send to External <=90sec
o    Exchange 2013 Organization Synthetic: Mailbox Database Size (MB)
o    Exchange 2013 Organization Synthetic: Messages Received/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Organization Synthetic: Messages Sent/sec
o    Exchange 2013 Organization Synthetic: Store Messages Submitted/sec

All these perf collection rules will help you to make reports:

The following components are discovered:

•    Exchange 2013 Server
•    Distributed applications:
o    Exchange 2013 Organization
o    Exchange 2013 Active Directory Site
o    Exchange 2013 Database Availability Group
•    Exchange 2013 Managed Availability objects:
o    Exchange 2013 Health Set
     Exchange 2013 Customer Touch Points
     Exchange 2013 Key Dependencies
     Exchange 2013 Server Resources
     Exchange 2013 Service Components
•    Exchange 2013 server components:
o    Exchange 2013 IIS Application Pool
o    Exchange 2013 Windows Service
o    Exchange 2013 Mailbox Database Copy

One new Group and others renamed:

Dashboards:

Two new beautiful and very useful dashboards:

Diagram:

Views:

So all these things makes monitoring Exchange with SCOM a lot more sense.

You can download the latest version here. I am very happy with this version and hope you are also. Remember to read the guide. There is a good detailed guide about the MP.