Mike Lagase

Saving the Exchange world one day at a time.....

May, 2008

  • Mike Lagase

    WDS 3.01 and online mode crawling

    • 0 Comments

    Starting with WDS 3.01, to be able to use Windows Desktop Search to index an outlook profile running in online mode requires that you use group policy to enable this functionality.  We index cached mode profiles by default, but online mode crawling is a large performance hit on the server causing the Slow Findrow rate for Mailbox Stores to soar. This has always been an issue with the default behavior, but it is nice to see that we now disable this by default for Online mode profiles.

     

    More information on this can had from the WDS Administration guide. Here is a snippet from this guide.

     

    Using WDS and Microsoft Outlook\Exchange

    Finding items in e-mail has been a concern for business people for many years. The hard part is finding a way to keep a current index of all e-mail messages and attachments without excessively taxing the mail server. WDS supports Outlook indexing in both cached and uncached mode. However, WDS 3.01 must be configured via Group Policy to index e-mail when cached mode is turned off (Note, this is different from WDS 2.6x which indexed online content by default).

     http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=00645e54-70a8-4d05-906d-af8773cbc728&DisplayLang=en

     

    The two group policy settings that are used to enable/disable this functionality and to force cached mode outlook profiles is the following:

    1. “Disable Cached Exchange Mode on New Profiles”
    2. “Cached Exchange Mode (File | Cached Exchange Mode)”.  

    This has also been updated in the Windows 2008 online documentation at http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/library/584732fa-ad15-4cc6-9c1b-469add7da5621033.mspx?mfr=true

     

    Mike

  • Mike Lagase

    Perfwiz replacement for Exchange 2007

    • 6 Comments

    NOTE: This version of Perfwiz had been replaced by a newly written script that is talked about in http://blogs.technet.com/b/mikelag/archive/2010/07/09/exchange-2007-2010-performance-data-collection-script.aspx

    Here is a replacement for general Exchange 2007 Performance data gathering. Use this in place of Perfwiz.exe as this utility does not capture all of the counters needed to properly troubleshoot Exchange 2007 performance issues.

    Follow the steps below to enable these performance counters on any given Exchange 2007 server

    Windows 2003 version of Perfwiz

    1. Extract the contents of Exchange_2007_Perfwiz.zip to your Exchange server.
    2. Open Performance Monitor
    3. Expand Performance Logs and Alerts and select Counter Logs.
    4. Right click Counter logs and select "New Log Settings From". Select the htm file that was extracted in Step 1. Click OK
    5. Select the Log Files tab and click the Configure button
    6. For the Log location, change this to a location of your choice. Click Ok
    7. Click OK to save the Performance Counter log.
    8. To start the Perfmon log, right click "Exchange 2007 Perfwiz" and then select Start.
    9. Let this run during the problem period where performance is affected
    10. Stop the perfmon log by right-clicking "Exchange 2007 Perfwiz" and selecting Stop
    11. Make arrangements with a CSS representative to get the files analyzed.

    Windows 2008 version of Perfwiz

    1. Download the appropriate version of Perfwiz for your server. Currently I have 2 versions.

      • Exchange 2007 Perfwiz (MBX-CAS-HUB specific) - This file has targeted counters instead of including all (*) counters for obvious performance reasons and easier parsing.
      • Exchange 2007 Perfwiz (All Counters). Use this at your own discretion as this will collect a *lot* of data which may decrease performance on an Exchange Server.
      • Other Role based XMLs are self-explanatory

        How to download 
        To download these XML files to your computer, right click the file of your choice, select Save Target As... , and then save it to a directory location of your choice on your Exchange Server


        Role Based
        Use these as a high level look in to how the server is performing and if  you need to branch out with more counters, use the Full Counter/Instance set below.

        Exchange_2007_Perfwiz-AIO.xml (HUB/CAS/MBX All-In-One)
        Exchange_2007_Perfwiz-CAS.xml
        Exchange_2007_Perfwiz-MBX.xml
        Exchange_2007_Perfwiz-HUB.xml
        Exchange_2007_Perfwiz-HUB-CAS.xml
        Exchange_2007_Perfwiz-UM.xml

        All Counters/All Instances
        Use this counter set at your own discretion as this could potentially cause performance degradation on your server trying to log this amount of counters.

        Exchange_2007_Perfwiz-Full.xml


    2. Open Performance Monitor
    3. Expand Reliability and Performance and then expand Data Collector Sets
    4. Right click User Defined, Select New, and then Data Collector Set
    5. Enter a unique name for this Data Collector set (ie. ExPerfwiz), select Create from a template (Recommended) and then click Next
    6. Select the Browse button, navigate to the XML file that was saved in Step 1, select Open
    7. Select Next on the next screen
    8. Enter in a root Directory of where you would like to store the performance log files. Click Next
    9. If you need to run this performance log under different credentials, enter it on this page. Click Finish

    Recognition

    I'd like to thank Ben Winzenz for creating the Windows 2008 *full* version of Perfwiz and John Rodriguez for getting me the counter sets for the All-In-One XML which I doctored up in a custom XML file. 


    Updates
    2/13/2009 - Updated all XML files to include counters from Monitoring Without System Center Operations Manager

    9/28/2009 - Added TCPv4 and TCPv6 counters to all Perfwiz counter sets

    10/15/2009 – Large update to the XML files. See below what has been added

    Role: HUB, CAS, HUB-CAS, UM, MB, AIO

    \Memory\*
    \Netlogon(*)\*
    \Process(*)\*
    \Processor(*)\*
    \Redirector\*
    \Server\*
    \System\*
    \MSExchange ADAccess Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Searches timed out per minute
    \MSExchange ADAccess Domain Controllers(*)\Long running LDAP operations/Min
    \MSExchange ADAccess Domain Controllers(*)\Number of outstanding requests
    \MSExchange ADAccess Local Site Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Read calls/Sec
    \MSExchange ADAccess Local Site Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Read Time
    \MSExchange ADAccess Local Site Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Search calls/Sec
    \MSExchange ADAccess Local Site Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Search Time
    \MSExchange ADAccess Local Site Domain Controllers(*)\LDAP Searches timed out per minute
    \MSExchange ADAccess Local Site Domain Controllers(*)\Long running LDAP operations/Min
    \MSExchange ADAccess Local Site Domain Controllers(*)\Number of outstanding requests

    Role: HUB, CAS, HUB-CAS, UM, AIO
    \MSExchange Store Interface(*)\ConnectionCache num caches
    \MSExchange Store Interface(*)\ConnectionCache out of limit creations
    \MSExchange Store Interface(*)\ConnectionCache total capacity
    \MSExchange Store Interface(*)\ExRPCConnection creation events
    \MSExchange Store Interface(*)\ExRPCConnection disposal events
    \MSExchange Store Interface(*)\ExRPCConnection outstanding

    Role: CAS, HUB-CAS, AIO
    \MSExchange OWA\AS Queries Failure %
    \MSExchange OWA\Average Search Time
    \MSExchange OWA\Failed Requests/sec
    \MSExchange OWA\Logons/sec
    \MSExchange OWA\Proxy Response Time Average
    \MSExchange OWA\Proxy User Requests/sec
    \MSExchange OWA\Store Logon Failure %

    Full
    Netlogon(*)\*
    \MSExchange ADAccess Local Site Domain Controllers(*)\*

    Windows 2003 version of Perfwiz for Exchange 2007
    Netlogon(*)\*

    10/21/2009 – Updated Database Instance Counters to include all instances. Affects AIO and MBX Role XML
    11/4/2009 – Added the following Physical Disk Counters to all XML files.

    \PhysicalDisk(*)\Avg. Disk Queue Length
    \PhysicalDisk(*)\Avg. Disk sec/Read
    \PhysicalDisk(*)\Avg. Disk sec/Write
    \PhysicalDisk(*)\Disk Reads/sec
    \PhysicalDisk(*)\Disk Transfers/sec
    \PhysicalDisk(*)\Disk Writes/sec

    01/11/2010 -  Added ASP.NET\Requests queued to the CAS,HUB-CAS, and AIO XMLs. Added MSExchange Database(Information Store)\Database Cache % Hit to the AIO and the MBX XMLs.

    01/14/2010 - Added all MSExchangeIS Client counters to MBX and AIO XMLs

     

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