Exchange Message Tracking Logs hold a wealth of information about email messages during transport. Utilities that can parse message tracking logs and analyze them for administrators have historically been important tools when troubleshooting certain mail flow problems.
With Exchange 2010, the message tracking log format has been modified to hold additional fields about messages. For those who enjoyed using "Process Tracking Log tool for Exchange Server 2007" in the past, you would be very pleased. We have come up with the new version which works with both Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010. Same looks and great generated reports included!
When to use Process Tracking Log:
PTL may help in following situations:
- Message Looping
- Message failures, such as in Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs)
- List of top mail senders
- List of top mail recipients
- Top large message size generators
- Queues backing up
- Performance issues due to message load
- Simply monitoring server message load
To learn more about PTL tool and the reports it generates please review the original article, "Process Tracking Log tool for Exchange Server 2007". The article provides example outputs and how you can use these to further analyze your mail flow.
Where to download the new Process Tracking Log tool:
To install the latest PTL, please see post attachment to download it.
Please note: this script is not officially supported by Microsoft. Please see the script for more details!
How to Use this tool:
The command set used to run the PTL script are still the same as the original tool.
Usage:
cscript ProcessTrackingLog.vbs <LogFilePath> <NumFiles> <hub|edge|all> [ <mm/dd/yyyy> | today | yesterday ]
Examples:
1) To parse one file:
cscript ProcessTrackingLog.vbs "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\Logs\MessageTracking\MSGTRK20110401-1.LOG" 1 all
2) To parse one file in a single directory:
cscript \data\scripts\ProcessTrackingLog.vbs "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\Logs\MessageTracking" 1 all
3) To parse all files in a single directory:
cscript \data\scripts\ProcessTrackingLog.vbs “C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\Logs\MessageTracking” 0 all
4) To parse all files in all subdirectories in a single directory:
cscript \data\scripts\ProcessTrackingLog.vbs "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\Logs\MessageTracking" 0 all
5) To parse 3 files in each subdirectory:
cscript \data\scripts\ProcessTrackingLog.vbs "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\Logs\MessageTracking" 3 all
6) To parse all files in each subdirectory that were logged yesterday:
cscript \data\scripts\ProcessTrackingLog.vbs "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\Logs\MessageTracking" 0 all yesterday
7) To parse all files in each subdirectory that were logged on 6/5/2011:
cscript \data\scripts\ProcessTrackingLog.vbs "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\TransportRoles\Logs\MessageTracking" 0 all 6/5/2011
NOTE: use of hub and edge assume "HUB" or "GWY" in directory path, otherwise specify all. Also note that the message tracking log path location has changed between Exchange 2007 and 2010 since in Exchange 2010 the path has “V14” folder added.
All results are stored in “c:\temp\msgtrack\output” folder.
Some enhancements:
- PTL now works with both Exchange 2007 and 2010 message tracking log. Note that the actual path for message tracking log differs between Exchange 2007 and 2010.
- The tool will now automatically create the path folder “c:\temp\msgtrack\output” where the output results will be stored.
- The summary file, “MTSummaryResults.txt”, will have the Exchange version as well as PTL version listed.
We will maintain this tool from time to time or provide enhancements. Please contact Nasser, Nadeem, or me if you have any questions.
Nasser Salemizadeh, Mohammad Nadeem, Shawn Zaravar, Todd Luttinen
ProcessTrackingLogV14.00.zip
