Monitor an Exchange 2007 cluser on Server 2008

Hi everyone,

I have looked extensively through thwack for an answer to our issue, but have not found anything that would tell us how to do this.

We would like to monitor exchange services on an exchange cluster that resides on a Windows Server 2008 cluster.

The posts in thwack all say add the virtual IP and then add the exchange servers, but we are unable to monitor the virtual IP. When we go to add it as a node, it cannot find the SNMP community string.

I tried adding it just as an ICMP monitor, but then the exchange services come back as "unavailable".

Does anyone have any suggestions or answers?

Thanks!

Network Security Administrator

Panda Restaurant Group

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Accepted answers

jiri.tomek

Hello Jason,
you don't need SNMP for just application monitoring. I just tried it with ICMP and it works. It also works for me with virtual IP, but it's just second IP for my network adapter. I suppose that you created Exchange cluster using Cluster administrator tool and it may set up virtual IP in different way so APM has some issues with it. I can't see any reason why it doesn't work if you are able to monitor virtual IP manually using other tools.

I would need more data for looking into it. If you are sure that you have your cluster set up correctly and that there is some issue with APM, you can try to open support case. They can at least tell you to collect diagnostics data to analyze this issue more closely. Just reference this thread in your support ticket.

All comments

jiri.tomek

Hello jason,
adding node as ICMP should work. Ensure that you have WMI access on that virtual IP. You can try "wbemtest" tool (part of standard Windows installation) to connect to virtual IP and enumerate WMI classes. If you get data this way, then APM should be able to monitor virtual IP as well.

If this doesn't work, you can try to add virtual IP node as "External" (check External checkbox when adding node). This way you can monitor applications on node but you won't get data about node itself (server status, server CPU, memory, ...). If you need just to monitor Exchange and don't care about hardware, this can fit your needs (of course if hardware fails, applications fails as well).

jason.hurst

Hi Jiri,

I have tried both of your suggestions without success.

Adding the virtual IP as an ICMP node allows Solarwinds to ping the virtual IP and show it is up, but I have not been successful with getting any service or process monitored.

The cluster will failover to whatever unit is the active unit so monitoring both units for software does not give us the configuration that we need to monitor.

I can enumerate all WMI classes on the virtual IP, because the virtual IP directs to the active box.

However, any process of service that is monitored against the virtual IP yields this response.

Testing on node (name deleted): failed with 'Undefined' status Invalid class

Is there some issue with 64 bit OS operating in a cluster?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Jason Hurst

Panda Restaurant Group

FormerMember

ICMP-only won't work. We need to be able to see it via SNMP in Orion.

jiri.tomek

Can you see WMI classes Win32_Services and Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Process when you enumareate that virtual IP?

What version of APM do you use? What OS do you have on server with APM? Do you use wbemtest tool from APM server to connect and enumerate virtual IP? What template(s) do you use to monitor cluster?

jason.hurst

Hi Jiri,

It does not appear to be an issue with connectivity, as I can successfully monitor processes and services on the physical hardware systems, just not the virtual IP.

I can run wbemtest against the virtual IP just fine from the NPM/APM server, we are using APM 3.1, the OS that it is running on is Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise edition with SP2, and we are using a template that I created that only has a process monitor and service monitor on it for testing.

Works fine when assigned to on unit in the cluster, but does not work against the virtual IP.

Denny seems to indicate that it cannot be monitored without SNMP working.

Thanks.

Jason Hurst

Panda Restaurant Group