Exchange 2010 SP1 Management Pack ships. Version 14.02.0071.0
Post from one of our Community Pillars - Kevin Holman.
Big thanks to Åke Pettersson from our team for driving this.
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Get it from the MS Download site:
https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7150bfed-64a4-42a4-97a2-07048cca5d23
This is a much expected and anticipated release… the updated version of the Exchange 2010 MP to support Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1.
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.
Installation Notes:
- When you install the MSI download – this is not like all our other MP’s. This MSI actually installs the Exchange Correlation engine with no prompts or warnings. Keep that in mind… so it is best to extract/install this MSI where you want the correlation engine to be installed!
- My first attempts to install this on my RMS kept failing. The problem was UAC…. this MSI doesn’t seem to invoke UAC…. so you get an “installation was interrupted” error when you try to install it. When I opened a CMD prompt as an Administrator (elevated) and then called the MSI – it installed just fine.
- When you install the MP/Correlation engine – you may get an error that the correlation files cannot be updated, and a restart will be required. Even if you stop the correlation engine service – you will be prompted for a reboot. Therefore – plan for this update to require an outage/downtime of your RMS for a reboot (or wherever the server hosting the Exchange Correlation engine is located)
For some troubleshooting the Correlation Engine events, or Clustering the Exchange 2010 Correlation Engine service – see my previous post:
I am hoping this new MP also addresses the Config Churn issue that the previous MP caused.