Replication Health Test

Replication technology in Microsoft Exchange Server enables high availability for Exchange Server databases. To maintain data integrity and prevent data loss in times of a database failure, each aspect of this mission-critical replication process – be it the availability of the active copy of the database, the replay and replication of changes to the passive copies, the underlying cluster service – have to function properly. This why, administrators need to keep tabs on the health of each of these aspects, promptly capture abnormalities, and resolve them before they affect the high availability of the Exchange databases. This is where the Replication Health test helps. This test checks all aspects of replication and replay and reports on the health of each aspect.

This test is disabled by default. To enable the test, go to the enable / disable tests page using the menu sequence : Agents -> Tests -> Enable/Disable, pick the Microsoft Exchange 2013/2016 as the Component type, set Performance as the Test type, choose the test from the disabled tests list, and click on the >> button to move the test to the ENABLED TESTS list. Finally, click the Update button.

Target of the test : A Microsoft Exchange 2013/2016 server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each aspect of replication

Configurable parameters for the test
  1. Test period - How often should the test be executed
  2. Host - The host for which the test is to be configured.
  3. port – The port at which the host listens.
  4. xchgextensionshellpath - The Exchange Management Shell is a command-line management interface, built on Windows PowerShell which enables you to administer every part of Microsoft Exchange. This test uses the Exchange management shell to run scripts and collect the desired performance metrics from the Exchange server. By default, the test auto-discovers the location of the Exchange management shell and thus, automatically loads the Exchange management shell snap-in (exshell.psc1) for script execution. This is why, the xchgextensionshellpath is set to none by default. 

  5. To make diagnosis more efficient and accurate, the eG Enterprise embeds an optional detailed diagnostic capability. With this capability, the eG agents can be configured to run detailed, more elaborate tests as and when specific problems are detected. To enable the detailed diagnosis capability of this test for a particular server, choose the On option. To disable the capability, click on the Off option.

    The option to selectively enable/disable the detailed diagnosis capability will be available only if the following conditions are fulfilled:

    • The eG manager license should allow the detailed diagnosis capability
    • Both the normal and abnormal frequencies configured for the detailed diagnosis measures should not be 0.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Status:

Indicates whether/not this aspect of replication is in good health. 

 

If the value of this measure is Success, it indicates that this replication aspect is in good health currently. If the value of this measure is Failure, it indicates problems in this replication aspect. The numeric values that correspond to these measure values are as follows:

Measure Value Numeric Value

Success

 1

Failure

 0

If the status reported by this measure is Failure, you can use the detailed diagnosis of this test to determine the reason for the failure.

Note:

Typically, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate status of each replication-related activity that is monitored. However, in the graph of this measure, the Numeric values are used to represent replication health.