New Template - Monitor Exchange 2007 WMI Counters

Check out our new template for monitoring Exchange 2007 WMI Counters. Exchange 2007's implementation of WMI is atypical, and won't work properly with the WMI Performance Counter Monitor. We built a mechanism and template to get around the limitation. Please import this template and assign it to you Exchange 2007 Hub Transport Servers or Mailbox Servers and you'll get rich monitoring of this application.

You can download the app from the Content Zone.

More details here:

Exchange 2007 WMI Counters Template

This template creates APM applications to ensure the reliability of your Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers by warning you before performance problems occur.

Some of the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) performance counters monitored in this template are only available to Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers that fill Hub Transport Server and/or Mailbox Server roles. Associating this template with a server that does not fill one or both of these roles results in an Unknown status for the unavailable WMI component monitors.

After importing this template, set the Statistic Critical Threshold for the WMI component monitors in the template as follows:

Note: Be sure to Click Submit after modifying the threshold values.

Role: Hub Transport Server
- Aggregate Delivery Queue Length (AllQueues)
Statistic Critical Threshold: 5000

- Active Remote Delivery Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 250

- Active Mailbox Delivery Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 250

- Submission Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 100

- Active NonSmtp Delivery Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 250

- Retry Mailbox Delivery Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 100

- Retry NonSmtp Delivery Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 100

- Retry Remote Delivery Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 100

- Unreachable Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 100

- Largest Delivery Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 200

- Poison Queue Length
Statistic Critical Threshold: 0

Role: Mailbox Server
- RPCAveragedLatency
Statistic Critical Threshold: 25

- RPCNumofSlowPackets
Statistic Critical Threshold: 3

- RPCRequests
Statistic Critical Threshold: 70

- MessagesQueuedForSubmission
Statistic Critical Threshold: 50

- Public: MessagesQueuedForSubmission
Statistic Critical Threshold: 20

- ReplicationReceiveQueueSize
Statistic Critical Threshold: 100

- SearchTaskRate
Statistic Critical Threshold: 10

- SlowFindRowRate
Statistic Critical Threshold: 10

- Averagedocumentindexingtime
Statistic Critical Threshold: 30

These Statistic Critical Threshold values were derived from guidance provided by:
"Monitoring Without System Center Operations Manager," Microsoft TechNet.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201720(EXCHG.80).aspx

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Jeff_Salisbury

On Server 2003 do I need to grant specific permissions for WMI to monitor these counters? They all report unable to connect to the servers by WMI using a domain admin member account.

Jeff

mdiotte

Hi Jeff,

Is there a firewall that could be preventing the connection? Remote WMI connections are made through DCOM which means high numbered ports are negotiated during the connection.

To answer your question, a domain account should have the permissions required to connect via WMI.

Here's a link to a tech ref article on how to test WMI connectivity from your APM server to your Exchange server: http://www.solarwinds.com/support/apm/docs/WMITesting.pdf

NetAdminCJ

I'm having the same problem. There's no firewall and the WMI testing worked. I've setup both the WMI counters template as well as the original Exchange 2007 template that came with APM, but both report an unknown status on all components.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

~CJ

salyerma

***Nevermind, I have noticed that mine do not work either. Those counters are not present on my Exchange Server in either RAW or Formatted. ***

In the template, change one of the monitors from win32_perfformattedData to win32_perfrawdata. (Change the formatted to raw) and see if it starts giving you data. The numbers will not be correct, but see if you get anything.

That will help narrow down whether your WMI driver is populating the Formatted data or not.

If you need better instructions, let me know. And remember which one you did, it will have to be changed back.

Marks

bbusbey

Denny,

How do we get the WMI counters template to work without powershell?

I have read that MS removed the exchange WMI namespace in Exchange 2007.

FormerMember

Denny,
How do we get the WMI counters template to work without powershell?
I have read that MS removed the exchange WMI namespace in Exchange 2007

We read the same thing , but it's not accurate. Use the Exchange 2007 template, and you'll see that we're polling WMI counters on Exchange 2007. They're just completely different than in 2003.

bbusbey

My poller is not working and says " the WMI credentials are not valid" , but when I test other WMI counters I get the readings.

What name space is being used to poll the exchange WMI?

josh.clark

We uses the cimv2 namespace