Exchange 2013 Performance Health Checker Script

Microsoft has just published the Exchange 2013 Performance Health Checker script, which checks various configuration items on Exchange 2013 servers to make sure they match the recommendations published in the “Exchange 2013 Sizing and Configuration Recommendations” guidance on TechNet. It also reports on OS, system and hardware information. It can be ran remotely, against a single server or a group of servers.

 

The script takes some of the most common configuration causes of Exchange 2013 performance cases that Microsoft has encountered in support and allows administrators to rule them out quickly without having to check each server or read through the entire TechNet guidance.

 

 

The current list of items the script reports on is:

• Operation System version
• Exchange Build
• Physical/Virtual Machine
• Server Manufacturer and Model (physical hardware only)
• VM host processor/memory configuration recommendations
• Exchange server roles
• Pagefile Size
• Power Settings
• .NET Framework version
• Network card name and speed
• Network card driver date and version (Windows 2012 and Windows 2012 R2 only)
• RSS enabled (Windows 2012 and Windows 2012 R2 only)
• Physical Memory amount
• Processor Model
• Number of processors, cores, and core speed
• Hyper-threading enabled/disabled
• Processor speed being throttled
• Current list of active/passive databases and mailboxes (optional)

 

Let us look at some examples. First, we run the script without any parameters, meaning it will check the local server. We could use the –Server parameter to run it against a remote server.

By including the –MailboxReport parameter, the script presents some statistics around mailboxes and databases:

Another useful parameter is –LoadBalancingReport which looks at all CAS servers to determine how user connections are being load balanced across these servers. We can use the -CasServerList to specify which CAS servers we want to check.

Every time the script runs, it outputs the results to a log file as mentioned at the end of every output. In the next screenshot we can see the report from the cmdlet above:

Office 365 Compliance Center

The new Compliance Center contains the key compliance-related features for an Office 365 administrator to manage compliance across Office 365, Exchange Online and SharePoint Online.

 

Currently many of the compliance features are still accessible through service-specific management interfaces, such as the Exchange Admin Center. However, this will change in the future as more service independent compliance features are added to the Compliance Center.

 

Consolidating compliance functionality across services into this single area will make compliance features easier to access and enhance your end-to-end task-based experience.

 

To access the Compliance Center you can either go directly to its URL at https://compliance.protection.outlook.com/Ucc or, if you are an Office 365 administrator:

1. Sign in to Office 365;

2. Select the app launcher icon in the upper-left and choose Admin:

 

3. In the lower-left navigation, expand Admin and choose Compliance:

 

4. You are then taken into the new Compliance Center:

 

 

As mentioned, this is currently being rolled out so it is possible that you will not see all the features in here just yet. For example, there will be an Auditing section as well which is not yet present in my tenant.

 

Stay tuned for a full article on the new Office 365 Compliance Center!

AADSync Performance Counters Error

While working on a project recently, I came across the following error on my AADSync server:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        ADSync
Date:          1/12/2015 12:47:11 PM
Event ID:      6313
Task Category: Server
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      AADSync.contoso.com
Description: The server encountered an unexpected error creating performance counters for management agent “xxxxx.onmicrosoft.com – AAD”.

Performance counters will not be available for this management agent.

To fix this issue in AADSync, you can either perform a clean install (often out of the question) or run the following commands to reload the performance counters:

1. Stop AADSync’s service;
2. Delete the following registry key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ADSync\Performance];
3. Recreate the Performance key;
4. Run the following two commands from an elevated command prompt:
• unlodctr.exe ADSync
• lodctr.exe “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Azure AD Sync\Bin\mmsperf.ini”
5. Start AADSync’s service.

Exchange Online Protection Quarantine

A decade ago, Bill Gates predicted a spam-free world by 2006. Although we are seeing a small decline in spam, this is unfortunately far from coming true... Exchange Online Protection (EOP) does a great job, in my opinion, at filtering out obvious spam. According to the latest figures from Microsoft, ten million spam messages are blocked every single minute on average by EOP, 10 million! That is an impressive number. However, every day attackers around the world come up with new techniques to fool spam detection engines. Threats take different forms, such as an unidentified spam campaign, unknown malware or a completely new virus. This means that a small percentage (around 3%) of email that is likely to be spam still comes through and are sent to users’ Junk E-mail folder. Users obviously do not want spam in their inboxes, but they often have to review this folder to make sure no good messages (false positives) are mixed in with the bad.

 

EOP provides two main methods of handling spam detected by its content filters. Administrators can configure it so that spam is sent to the Junk E-mail folder in Outlook and Outlook Web App (OWA), which is the default option, or to direct it into a web-based quarantine.

 

Sending spam to the Junk folder is the most common choice as that is what users have been using for many years. But from experience I also noticed that this is the case as not everyone is aware of the quarantine feature. On the other hand, some customers have non-Exchange email systems that do not support the Junk E-mail folder approach, have a 3rd party filtering system that sends spam reports to users, or simply prefer the spam quarantine.

 

Since EOP was launched it has supported spam quarantine, but initially administrators were the only ones who had access to this quarantine, through the Exchange Admin Center, and only they were able to release spam messages... But for some time now administrators can configure EOP to give users self-service management of spam-quarantined messages. So let us have a look at how this works and how we can configure it.

 

 

In this article, we will explore the Quarantine feature of EOP, including how to enable, configure and manage it both from the administrator and end user perspectives. To continue reading, please go to the Exchange Online Protection Quarantine article at MSExchange.org.