Exchange Mailbox Store Test

The Information store is responsible for data storage and management. It is the interface between the clients and the server running Exchange Server. There are two components of the Information Store, namely:

Mailboxes
Public Folders

The test reports statistics pertaining to the Mailbox component of the Information store.

Target of the test : An Exchange server 2000/2003

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every Information store being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The IP address of the machine where the Exchange Server is installed.
Port	The port number through which the Exchange server communicates.
IsPassive	If the value chosen is Yes, then the Exchange server under consideration is a passive server in an Exchange cluster. No alerts will be generated if the server is not running. Measures will be reported as "Not applicable" by the agent if the server is not up.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Active client logons	The number of logons that have been active on the information store within the last ten minutes time interval.	Number	When a MAPI client (outlook) connects, the first request to the server will establish a session. Once the session is established, the client will make a request to logon to the current session. Sometimes, the number of Active client logons can be larger than the number of mailboxes on the server. This may be caused by any of the following: A client frequently keeps more than one logon per session. Thus, each user that is reading mails may have 2 (or more) active logons. Additionally, it includes users from other databases or other servers who are logged on to other users' mailboxes (such as in the case of checking calendar tasks, if the users have shared their calendars) If the users are logging on and logging off frequently. In short, Active client logons are incremented with each logon, and removed every 10 minutes if they are inactive. If clients are logging on multiple times in a 10 minute period, the active client logons number can be higher than "Client logons".
Client logons	The number of ‘distinct’ users logging into their information store.	Number	This measure is a good indicator of user activity in the Exchange Server. This information can be used by the administrator for planning the capacity of the mail server.
Mail messages in send queue	The number of messages in the send queue of an information store.	Number	This measure is usually zero under normal conditions. This measure can be non-zero in the case of very busy systems (2000 users and more).
Mail receive queue length	This measure shows the number of messages in the receiving queue of the information store.	Number	This measure is usually zero under normal conditions. A non-zero value for this measure indicates that the SMTP service is choking up memory.
Mails opened	This measure indicates the rate at which the requests to open the messages are being submitted to the information store.	Msgs/Sec	This measure shows the overall picture of user activity. An abnormally high value for this measure may indicate that the Exchange 2000 Server is overloaded.
Mails sent	This measure indicates the rate at which messages are sent by the information store.	Msgs/Min
Avg mail delivery time	This measure indicates the average time between the submission of a message to the information store and the submission to other storage providers for the last 10 messages.	Secs	A non-zero value for this measure indicates a change in user workload. An abnormally high value for this measure indicates inability to deliver to one or more destinations. One of the possible reasons for this can be a network failure.
Avg local mail delivery time	This measure indicates the average time between the submission of a message to the information store and the delivery to all local recipients (recipients on the same server) for the last 10 messages.	Secs	A non-zero value for this measure indicates a change in the user workload. An abnormally high value for this measure may indicate that the server is overloaded.