This template contains basic performance counters and services for monitoring Exchange 2013 Mailbox Role. This template is designed to work out of the box and does not require any additional configuration. If you need more detailed monitoring you should use it in combination with the Exchange 2013 Mailbox Role Counters (Advanced) template.
Prerequisites: RPC and WMI access to the Exchange server.
Credentials: Windows Administrator on the target server.
Monitored Components
Service: Microsoft Exchange Active Directory Topology
This service provides Active Directory topology information to Exchange services. If this service is stopped, most Exchange services will be unable to start.
Service: Microsoft Exchange EdgeSync
This service replicates configuration and recipient data from the Hub Transport servers to the Edge Transport servers.
Service: Microsoft Exchange Frontend Transport
This service proxies SMTP connections inbound to Hub servers and outbound from Hub servers
Service: Microsoft Exchange Information Store
This service manages the Microsoft Exchange Information Store. This includes mailbox databases and public folder databases. If this service is stopped, mailbox databases and public folder databases on this computer are unavailable. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depends on it will fail to start.
Service: Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Assistants
This service performs background processing of mailboxes in the Exchange store.
Service: Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication
This service processes mailbox move requests.
Service: Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Transport Delivery
This service, running on the Mailbox servers, receives mail items from Hub server, submits them to extension modules for processing and commits them into mailbox database.
Service: Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Transport Submission
This service, running on the Mailbox servers, receives the Submit events, processes the messages by converting them from MAPI to MIME and hands them over to the Hub Transport servers.
Service: Microsoft Exchange Transport
This service returns CPU and memory usage of Microsoft Exchange Transport Service. This service provides transport for Exchange infrastructure.
Service: Microsoft Exchange Transport Log Search
This service provides remote search capability for Microsoft Exchange Transport log files.
IS Client Type: RPC Average Latency
This monitor shows a server RPC latency, in ms, averaged for the past 1,024 packets for a particular client protocol. The returned value should be less than 50ms on average for each client. Wide disparities between different client types, such as IMAP4, Microsoft Outlook Anywhere, or other clients (MAPI), can help direct troubleshooting to appropriate subcomponents.
Database: Database Page Fault Stalls/sec
This monitor shows the rate that database file page requests require of the database cache manager to allocate a new page from the database cache. If this value is nonzero, this indicates that the database is not able to flush dirty pages to the database file fast enough to make pages free for new page allocations.
Database: Database Cache % Hit
This monitor shows the percentage of database file page requests fulfilled by the database cache without causing a file operation. If this percentage is too low, the database cache size may be too small. The returned value should be over 90% for companies with majority online mode clients. Additionally, this value should be over 99% for companies with majority cached mode clients. If the hit ratio is less than these numbers, the database cache may be insufficient.
Database: Log Record Stalls/sec
This monitor shows the number of log records that cannot be added to the log buffers, per second, because the log buffers are full. If this counter is nonzero for a long period of time, the log buffer size may be bottlenecking. The average value should be below 10 per second. Spikes (maximum values) should not be higher than 100 per second. If I/O log write latencies are high, check for RAID5 or synchronize replication on log devices. You can also use the MSExchange Database Instances (Information store/<Database Name>)\log record stalls/sec counter to determine which database(s) may be having issues. This will assist you in determining which drive(s) to focus on. This counter is an extended Exchange counter in Performance Monitor.
Database: Log Threads Waiting
This monitor shows the number of threads waiting for their data to be written to the log to complete an update of the database. If this number is too high, the log may be bottlenecking. The returned value should be less than 10 on average. Regular spikes concurrent with log record stall spikes indicate that the transaction log disks are bottlenecking. If the value for log threads waiting is more than the spindles available for the logs, there is a bottleneck on the log disks.
Database Instances: Log Generation Checkpoint Depth
This monitor represents the amount of work in the log file count that needs to be redone or undone to the database files if the process fails. The returned value should be below 500 at all times for the Mailbox server role. A healthy server should indicate between 20 and 30 for each database instance. If checkpoint depth increases continually for a sustained period, this indicates either a long-running transaction, (which will impact the version store), or a bottleneck involving the database disks.
Database Instances: I/O Database Reads Average Latency
This monitor shows the average length of time, in ms, per database read operation. The returned value should be 20ms on average. Also, this should show 50ms as spikes.
Database Instances: I/O Database Writes Average Latency
This monitor shows the average length of time, in ms, per database write operation. Returning value should be 50 ms on average. Spikes of up to 100 ms are acceptable if not accompanied by database page fault stalls.
Store Interface: RPC Latency average (ms)
This monitor shows the average latency, in ms, of RPC requests. The average is calculated over all RPCs since exrpc32 was loaded. The returned value should be less than 100ms at all times.
Transport Queues: Active Mailbox Delivery Queue Length
This monitor shows the number of messages in the active mailbox queues. The returned value should be less than 250 at all times.
Transport Queues: Submission Queue Length
This monitor shows the number of messages in the submission queue. The returned value should not exceed 100. If sustained high values are occurring, investigate Active Directory and Mailbox servers for bottlenecks or performance-related issues.
Transport Queues: Active Non-Smtp Delivery Queue Length
This monitor shows the number of messages in the drop directory used by a Foreign connector. The returned value should be less than 250 at all times.
Transport Queues: Retry Mailbox Delivery Queue Length
This monitor shows the number of messages in a retry state attempting to deliver a message to a remote mailbox. The returned value should be less than 100 at all times.
Transport Queues: Unreachable Queue Length
This monitor shows the number of messages in the Unreachable queue. The returned value should not exceed 100.
Transport Queues: Poison Queue Length
This monitor shows the number of messages in the poison message queue. The returned value should be 0 at all times.
Portions of this document are provided courtesy of the following sources:.
Client Access Server Counters: Exchange 2010 Help: "Microsoft TechNet":
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff367877.aspx.
