Exchange BPA Tools
Happy Easter to you all...!
It has been a hectic time here recently hence not been very active... I want to re-iterate some of the most useful Proactive and Reactive tools that have been released and of which are still in constant development.
ExBPA - I don't think I need to comment much on Mr Bowden's project - But in case you don't know, this tool, when run in your Exchange environment will basically go out and check the AD, the registry, the OS, Exchange, all sorts and tell you what should the best configuration for your Exchange Infrastructure, what binaries are out date, whether your an open relay etc - If you haven't installed this tool it is quite simply a must - I am quite happy to put a bet on that there will be a least one configurational amendment ExBPA will suggest... :)
The other probably a little less known tools are as follows:
ExDRA - This tool is used when you have an issue in mounting Exchange stores. As some of you will be familar if a store doesn't mount you may well have to start running ESEUtil /mh and ESEUtil /ml to check the database and log headers in order to figure out what log is missing / corrupt. I know from my support days that this can appear challenging and in some cases a bit of a head scrambler for those not familiar with what the output is actually displaying. In some cases, admins revert straight to an ESEUtil /p which as I described in a previous post is a last ditch attempt to get the store mounted.
ExDRA (current release 1.0) will help admins (if they ever get into a disaster recovery situation) do the right thing right..!
It is really a great tool and we would appreciate your feedback - if you use the tool and find that you feel something is missing or doesn't do what you expect - let me know through the blog and I will feed it back to the Product Group.
ExPTA (Current release 1.1) - This tool will help you analyse the performance of a particular Exchange Server that is having perf issues, whether that is perceived as client issues and / or Exchange disk problems. If you have performance issues, then run this tool when the problem is occuring and it will help you in diagnosing the root cause.
There is one more on its way. It's not publicly available yet, but when it is, all those Mail flow issues will be a thing of the past..! ;)
Check all the BPA tools out here