eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by XchgMailboxStoreTest

The Information store is responsible for data storage and management. It is the interface between the clients and the server running Exchange Server. There are two

  • Mailboxes
  • Public Folders
  • The XchgMailboxStoreTest reports statistics pertaining to the Mailbox component of the Information store. The measures made by this test are as follows:

    Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
    Active_client_logons The number of active client logons into the Information store Number When a MAPI client (outlook) connects, the first request to the server will establish a session. Once the session is established, the client will make a request to logon to the current session. Sometimes, the number of Active client logons can be larger than the number of mailboxes on the server. This may be caused by any of the following:
    • A client frequently keeps more than one logon per session. Thus, each user that is reading mails may have 2 (or more) active logons.
    • Additionally, it includes users from other databases or other servers who are logged on to other users' mailboxes (such as in the case of checking calendar tasks, if the users have shared their calendars)
    • If the users are logging on and logging off frequently.

    In short, Active client logons are incremented with each logon, and removed every 10 minutes if they are inactive. If clients are logging on multiple times in a 10 minute period, the active client logons number can be higher than "Client logons".

    Client_logons The number of 'distinct' users logging into their information store Number This measure is a good indicator of user activity in the Exchange Server. This information can be used by the administrator for planning the capacity of the mail server.
    Mail_send_qsize The number of messages in the send queue of an information store Number This measure is usually zero under normal conditions.

    This measure can be non-zero in the case of very busy systems.

    Mail_rcvd_qsize This measure shows the number of messages in the receiving queue of the information store. Number This measure is usually zero under normal conditions.

    A non-zero value for this measure indicates that the SMTP service is taking up excessive memory.

    Mails_open_rate This measure indicates the rate at which the requests to open the messages are being submitted to the information store. Msgs/Sec This measure shows the overall picture of user activity. An abnormally high value for this measure may indicate that the Exchange Server is overloaded.
    Mails_sent_rate This measure indicates the rate at which messages are sent by the information store. Msgs/Min  
    Avg_mail_delvry_time This measure indicates the average time between the submission of a message to the information store and the submission to other storage providers for the last 10 messages. Secs A non-zero value for this measure indicates a change in user workload.

    An abnormally high value for this measure indicates inability to deliver to one or more destinations. One of the possible reasons for this can be a network failure.

    Note that this measure will not be available for an Exchange 2007 server.

    Avg_mail_local_delvry_time This measure indicates the average time between the submission of a message to the information store and the delivery to all local recipients (recipients on the same server) for the last 10 messages. Secs A non-zero value for this measure indicates a change in the user workload.

    An abnormally high value for this measure may indicate that the server is overloaded.