April 2005
This document provides an overview of the changes made to HP OpenView Smart Plug-in for Microsoft Exchange Server (Exchange SPI) for the B.09.00 release. It contains important information not included in the manuals or the online help.
In This Version
Installation Notes
Enhancements and Fixes
Known Problems, Limitations, and Workarounds
Support
The Exchange SPI makes OpenView performance and problem management processes available for monitoring Microsoft Exchange Servers.
This version of the SPI for Exchange manages Exchange 2003 SP1, Exchange 2000 SP3, post-SP3 and Exchange 5.5 SP3, SP4.
Installation requirements, as well as instructions for installing and upgrading the Exchange SPI, are
documented in the Configuration Guide for HP OpenView Smart Plug-in for Microsoft Exchange Server provided in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format. The
document file is included on the product's CD media as
Exchange_Config.pdf.
| PROBLEM: | The dependency created from the "Microsoft Exchange Services" node (Exch2kSvcs@@) to the Windows Infrastructure node (WINOSSPI:SystemServices_OnNode) is reversed. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | Problem with dependencies. | |
| FIX: | The dependency created from the "Microsoft Exchange Services" node (Exch2kSvcs@@) to the Windows Infrastructure node (WINOSSPI:SystemServices_OnNode) is removed. |
| PROBLEM: | In the End to End Message ping XML file, if the host name for the Exchange server is in lowercase, the collector will not process any nodes. Only host names in all Uppercase work correctly. The End to End Ping wizard seems to be using the case sensitivity of the host when it becomes managed. Customer problem is that any host they drag from unmanaged to managed is in lower case. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | Problem with the Exspi collector exspi_e2k.exe. | |
| FIX: | The EXSPI collector, exspi_e2k.exe, has been modified to properly process all node names in a case-insensitive way. |
| PROBLEM: | In EXSPI B.08.00 version, when the configured SLAs are not met the End to End policy does not send a warning/ critical message as specified in the policy. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | Problem with the Exspi collector exspi_e2k.exe. | |
| FIX: | The Exchange SPI collector, exspi_e2k.exe, has been fixed so that alarms (warning/ critical message) are sent to the console when configured SLAs are not met. |
| PROBLEM: | When using the Exchange SPI on an Exchange 2003 system, the Exchange database transaction files can grow at an alarming rate, causing them to consume all the disk space and stop the Exchange services. This problem has been seen when only the standard EXSPI policies and the Advanced policies for Reporter Collection are installed. If the EXSPI policies are removed the transaction files stop growing. The transaction files which grow resides in the :\EXCHSRVR\MDBDATA\ directory with filenames similar to E008098.log | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | The cause is Microsoft's implementation of ADO deep queries: when executing this type of query (without making any writes to the database) an enormous amount of data is written to the transaction log files. | |
| FIX: | The EXSPI collector was modified to perform many shallow client side traversals. Performance improved during testing. |
| PROBLEM: | Top sources Report only 2 domains deep, need 3 deep for countries like Brazil. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | In countries outside of the United States it is common to have a domain name of company.com.br. If we report on just the last two domains, then the reports would report on all Brazillian companies as com.br. This isn't enough granularity. | |
| FIX: | All sources and destinations will be reported on the full domain path. |
| PROBLEM: | Customer's Storage Limits column shows "Mailbox Disabled" and "Prohibit Send" with none of the mailboxes available. But some mailboxes and AD users limits do have a mailbox limit set on some users that overrides the global settings (set to warning 15MB and prohibit send). The report has values well below this but shows status as disabled. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | Problem with the Exspi collector exspi_e2k.exe. | |
| FIX: | Exspi_e2k.exe has been modified to display the correct Storage limits status in the EXSPI report "Mailbox Details by server". |
| PROBLEM: | The Exchange SPI B.08.00 "Exchange Top Recipients" report column "Mailbox Name" correctly lists only the mailboxes of the domain in which the Exchange server exists. For example, if there are two domains - D1 and D2. There is an Exchange server in D1, but there are users with mailboxes on this server in both D1 and D2. The mailbox named "D1\Joe" is listed correctly on the report, but where the mailbox is in the D2 domain, (should be D2 \Sally), it reads just "\Sally" with no domain indicated on the report. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | The EXSPI collector is set to collect only the mailboxes of the domain in which an Exchange server exists. | |
| FIX: | The EXSPI collector, exspi_e2k.exe, was changed so the Exspi Exchange Top Recipients report in the column "Mailbox Name" correctly lists not only the mailboxes of the domain where the Exchange server exist in but also all the other mailboxes in other domains that belong to the managed Exchange server. |
| PROBLEM: | Mailbox metrics collection is not completed correctly when Exchange Cluster node fails over. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | Collecting mailbox metrics through ADO on a busy system during a failover. | |
| FIX: | Exchange SPI normally uses ADO to access mailbox information from an Exchange Server. This access is slow (up to 2-3 hours) when there are a large number of mailboxes on the Exchange Server. If a failover happens while the EXSPI collector is collecting these mailbox metrics, it results in null entries showing up in the System Summary report. With Exchange Server 2003 it is possible to get the same information from WMI much faster (2-3 minutes). The Exchange SPI collector, exspi_e2k.exe, has been changed so that when running in an Exchange 2003 server, it will collect these metrics using WMI. This greatly reduces the likelihood that a failover may occur while the EXSPI collector is running, resulting in clean reports. |
| PROBLEM: | When attempting to collect Instant Messaging data the collection policies (EXSPI-6.0 DC Instant Messaging / Enabled User) abort with Error Message: EXSPI-40: Exchange Server Software not installed on this system (Check: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Exchange\Setup). Unable to perform collection! The configuration of the server has only the IM service running on it. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | EXSPI data collector checks whether a full version of Exchange 2000 server is installed. If not, it logs an error and exits. | |
| FIX: | Modified EXSPI collector to bypass full Exchance server check for IM metrics. For IM metrics now it only checks whether IM service is installed or not. |
| PROBLEM: | Initial log files indicate that dependency to the WinOS system service was failing. Removing the creation of this from the service creation script allowed for the creation of the service map, still there is a problem with the cluster information where there is a corruption in the service key field. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | Problem with EXSPI_CreateServices.js. | |
| FIX: | Solution provided in new version of EXSPI_CreateServices.js that corrects this problem. |
| PROBLEM: | On an Exchange server with many mailboxes, Exchange SPI metrics 612-613,630-632,634,815 can take 2-3 hours to collect. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | Accessing mailbox information through ADO is slow on busy servers. | |
| FIX: | Exchange SPI normally uses ADO to access mailbox information from an Exchange Server. This access can be slow when there are thousands of mailboxes on the Exchange Server. With Exchange Server 2003 it is possible to get the same information from WMI much faster (2-3 minutes). The Exchange SPI collector, exspi_e2k.exe, has been changed so that when running on an Exchange 2003 server, it will attempt to collect these metrics using WMI first and will fall back to ADO when not readable with WMI. To access the maibox metrics with WMI you must supply credentials that have Active Directory configuration partition read privileges. |
| PROBLEM: | Milliseconds converted incorrectly to seconds in Delivery Time policies. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | Conversion incorrectly set. | |
| FIX: |
Updated polices to use the milliseconds value as received from performance source, for both thresholds and messages . |
| PROBLEM: | Tracking log data collector fails to gather metrics 660,662, and 663. The tracking log metric for 661 works. | |
|---|---|---|
| CAUSE: | The collector fails to collect Active Directory data due to an incorrect search path. | |
| FIX: | The search path was corrected. |
On the Connect to Forest dialog is the Advanced Exchange Data Collection checkbox. If your credentials do not have the privilege rights to access the Exchange server's WMI Control Security properties, OV-TV's request for the server's membership information will be denied. This security access is different than the permissions granted through the AD Users and Computer accounts. The denial takes time to timeout in WMI, depending on your network setup (sometimes 2 minutes per server). Since the request is performed on EACH Exchange server in the forest, the process can slow down the data collection process. To verify if you are being denied access to membership data, see the OVTV_OvTVExCollectorErrorLog.txt file. For details on interpreting the warning messages and for information on which WMI access privileges are required for advanced Exchange data collection, see the instructions in ch 1 of the Exchange SPI Configuration Guide.
OV Topology Viewer stops responding when WMI queries against an Exchange server on a malfunctining MS Windows cluster, and does not time out.
Possible Reason for the problem: OV-TV is blocked in its attempts to collect Exchange data, but fails to complete and stops responding at 75% complete because of a malfunctioning Windows cluster.
Workaround: In the Add Forest dialog, do not check the Advanced Exchange Data Collection.
The maximum number of search results returned by LDAP is, by default, configured to be 100 in an Exchange 5.5 server. Using the Directory Service Administrator Tool (ldp.exe from Microsoft windows 2000/2003 support tools) to connect to an Exchange server in the organization returns the error "Administrator Limit Exceeded" when attempting to list all Exchange 5.5 sites in the Exchange organization. Exchange SPI service auto-discovery will fail if the number of sites in an Exchange 5.5 organization, or the number of Exchange 5.5 servers in any Exchange 5.5 site, is larger than the maximum number of search results returned.
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This web site provides contact information and details about the products, services, and support that HP OpenView offers.
You can also go directly to the support web site at:
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©Copyright 2005 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.
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