eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by XchgASyncAgentTest

Devices communicating with Exchange via ActiveSync identify themselves to Exchange using a ‘User Agent’ string and a ‘User Agent Type’ string. For instance, an iPhone may identify itself to Exchange using the user agent string ‘Apple-iPhone/xxx.xxx’ and the user agent type ‘iPhone’. While the user agent string is unique for every device, multiple devices can be of the same user agent type. By tracking the types of user agents that are accessing Exchange via ActiveSync, administrators can determine which type of devices are attempting to synchronize with the Exchange mailboxes. In times of an overload, this information may point administrators to the exact type of devices that could be contributing to the heavy load. To obtain this useful information, administrators can use the XchgASyncAgentTest test.

For every user agent type, this test reports the total number of user agents of that type that are accessing ActiveSync at any given point in time. In addition, it also reports the number of unique devices of each type synchronizing with Exchange. This not only indicates the current synchronization load on Exchange, but also helps identify the user agent types (i.e., device types) that could be contributing to the workload.

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Num_hits Indicates the current number of synchronization requests from user agents of this type. Number This is a good indicator of the current synchronization load on the Exchange server. You can compare the value of this measure across user agents to know which type of user agents are actually overloading the server.
Unique_device Indicates the number of unique devices of this user agent type that are currently accessing ActiveSync. Percent Compare the value of this measure across user agent types to identify the device type that is significantly impacting the server workload.
Ratio Indicates the percentage of devices currently accessing ActiveSync that are of this user agent type. Percent Compare the value of this measure across user agent types to identify the device type that is significantly impacting the server workload.