Exchange Server 2007: Monitor Your Exchange Environment (part 2)

In both Server 2003 and Server 2008 (which includes the more advanced and complicated form of Event Viewer), there are Application logs. Because Exchange is considered an application, your informational or failure events are located here. This makes Event Viewer an essential part of your monitoring of Exchange.

There is software that automatically checks through event logs for predetermined flags with Exchange. However, you can manually open the Event Viewer to look for problems, too.

As you can see in Figure 4, you have Error, Warning, and Informational types of levels that are reported. The source might come from a variety of different places and the event IDs can range from the lower numbers into the thousands, so it is almost impossible to try to keep track of all this. Another solution that is programmed to keep track of all of those events would be a better solution, as we will see with MOM and/or SCOM. However, there are times when there are obvious codes or events that you are looking for, and you can use the filtering features of Event Viewer to track these down.

Figure 4. Using the Event Viewer to monitor Exchange events.

Attach a Task to an Event

Another feature of the Event Viewer in Server 2008 is the capability to attach a task to an event. Let’s say you see an error is repeating on your server. You want to know the next time it happens immediately. So, you locate the error in the Event Viewer and perform the following:

1.	Select the event to which you wish to attach a task.
2.	From the Actions pane, select Attach Task To This Event to begin the Create Basic Task Wizard.
3.	The first screen should have the name of the task already, but you can modify this. You can also include a description, and then click Next.
4.	Because you are creating this task to occur based off of an actual event, the Log, Source, and Event ID are already filled in for you (and grayed out) on the When a Specific Event Is Logged screen. Click Next.
5.	On the Action screen, you can choose to perform the following: Start a Program. Send an E-mail. Display a Message.
6.	Depending on the option you select in Step 5, you are able to configure which program you want, the email you wish to send, or the message you want displayed on the screen. Select your action and click Next.
7.	Input the details of your action and then click Next.
8.	On the Summary screen (shown in Figure 5), you are shown the name, the trigger (what will kick off the action), and the action. You can choose the option Open the Properties Dialog For This Task When I Click Finish in the event you want to make further adjustments to the task. Figure 5. Create an alert task based on an existing event.
9.	Click Finish.