2. Weekly Maintenance
Tasks
that do not require daily administrative input, but that still require
frequent attention, are categorized as weekly maintenance routines.
Recommended weekly maintenance routines are described in the following
sections.
Document Database File Sizes
In
an environment without mailbox storage limitations, the size of the
mailbox databases can quickly become overwhelmingly large. If the
volume housing the databases is not large enough to accommodate the
database growth beyond a certain capacity, services can stop, databases
can get corrupted, performance can get sluggish, or the system can halt.
Even
with mailbox size limitations implemented, administrators should be
aware of and document the size of databases so that they can determine
the estimated growth rate.
By documenting
the size of all mailbox databases on a weekly basis, administrators can
have a more thorough understanding of the system usage and capacity
requirements in their environment.
Verify Public Folders Replication
Many
environments rely on public folders to share information, and the
public folder configurations can vary widely from environment to
environment.
With environments that
replicate public folder information among different Exchange Server
servers, administrators should inspect the replication to ensure all
folders are kept up to date.
There are
several ways to perform quick tests to determine if a public folder is
replicating properly. Among these are manual testing and reviewing the Ex00yymmdd.log and Ex01yymmdd.log files. If problems exist, administrators can use these logs to troubleshoot.
Verify Online Maintenance Tasks
Exchange
Server 2007 records information in the application log about scheduled
online maintenance processes. Check this event log to verify that all
the online maintenance tasks are being performed and that no problems
are occurring.
Using the filtering
capabilities of the Event Viewer (View, Filter), administrators can
apply a filter to search for specific events, and can specify a date
(and time) range to search for these events. For example, it is easy to
filter the events to view all events with an ID of 1221 that have
occurred in the past week.
Alternatively,
in the right pane of the Event Viewer, click on the Event column to
sort events by their ID number; however, this view is more challenging
to read because you must then verify the dates of the events as well.
The following Event IDs should be regularly reviewed:
Event ID 1221—
This event reveals how much whitespace there is in a database. This
information is also useful in determining when offline database
defragmentation might be necessary.
Event ID 1206 and 1207— These IDs give information about the start and stop times for the cleanup of items past the retention date in Item Recovery.
Event ID 700 and 701—
These IDs indicate the start and stop times of the online database
defragmentation process. Administrators should ensure that the process
does not conflict with Exchange database backups and make sure that the
process completed without interruptions.
Event IDs 9531–9535— These IDs indicate the start and end times of the cleanup of deleted mailboxes that are past the retention date.
Analyze Resource Utilization
To
keep any environment healthy, overall system and network performance
should be regularly evaluated. An Exchange Server 2007 environment is
no exception.
At a minimum,
administrators should monitor system resources at least once a week.
Primary areas to focus on include the four common contributors to
bottlenecks: memory, processor, disk subsystem, and network subsystem.
Ideally,
utilizing a monitoring utility such as Microsoft Operations Manager to
gather performance data at regular intervals is recommended because
this data can be utilized to discover positive and negative trends in
the environment.
Check Offline Address Book Generation
An
Offline Address Book (OAB) is used by Outlook to provide offline access
to directory information from the Global Address List (GAL) when users
are working offline or in Cached Exchange mode. When a user starts
Outlook in Cached Exchange mode for the first time, the user’s Exchange
mailbox is synchronized to a local file (an .ost file) and the offline address list from the Exchange server is synchronized to a collection of files (.oab files) on the user’s computer.
By
default, the OAB is updated daily at 5:00 a.m. if there are changes.
Administrators can use the Exchange Management Console to determine the
last time it was updated to ensure remote users have a valid copy to
update from. To do so, follow these steps:
1. | Open the Exchange Management Console.
|
2. | In the console tree, expand Organization Configuration and select Mailbox.
|
3. | In
the results pane, select the Offline Address Book tab. Select the
address book you want to view, and then, in the action pane, click
Properties.
|
4. | Check the Modified field to determine when the Offline Address Book was last updated.
|
5. | If
you want to modify the default update schedule, that can be
accomplished on this page as well. Select one of the predefined
schedules from the drop-down box, or click Customize to create your own
schedule. |
6. | Click OK to exit the configuration.
|
Note
If
you are experiencing problems with OAB generation, enable diagnostic
logging and review the application log for any OAB generator category
events.
Monthly Maintenance
Recommended
monthly maintenance practices for Exchange Server 2007 do not require
the frequency of daily or weekly tasks, but they are, nonetheless,
important to maintaining the overall health of the environment. Some
general monthly maintenance tasks can be quickly summarized; others are
explained in more detail in the following sections.
General tasks include the following:
Perform
a reboot on the Exchange Server 2007 servers to free up memory
resources and kick-start online maintenance routines. This procedure
can usually coincide with the implementation of any necessary hotfixes
and/or service packs.
Install approved and tested service packs and updates.
Schedule and perform, as necessary, any major server configuration changes, including hardware upgrades.
Run the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer
Administrators
should run the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA) in their
environments on a regular basis to determine if there are any
configurations or settings that are not in line with Microsoft
recommended best practices. This utility and its configuration files
are updated often with new and improved settings, and available updates
are installed every time the utility is run.
Administrators
should perform a health check, permissions check, and connectivity test
at regular intervals, and the quarterly maintenance period is an ideal
time to do so.
During the health check, a 2-hour performance baseline can be gathered as well.
The
results of these scans can be saved and compared from month to month to
determine when particular issues might have occurred.
Analyze Database Free Space
An approximation of a database’s fragmentation can be made
using the database size and the amount of free space. The amount of
free space that can be recovered from a defragmentation and compaction
is provided within Event ID 1221 entries.
Test Uninterruptible Power Supply
Uninterruptible
Power Supply (UPS) equipment is commonly used to protect the server
from sudden loss of power. Most UPS solutions include supporting
management software to ensure that the server is gracefully shut down
in the event of power failure, thus preserving
the integrity of the system. Each manufacturer has a specific
recommendation for testing, and the recommended procedures should be
followed carefully. However, it should occur no less than once per
month, and it is advantageous to schedule the test for the same time as
any required server reboots.
