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Thursday, January 3, 2008

Tools for Troubleshooting NDRs

Non Delivery Reports like 5.1.1, 5.1.7 etc...
You can use the following diagnostic tools and files to help with basic NDR troubleshooting:

• A copy of the NDR. Make sure that you save the NDR message.

• The delivery status notification code in the NDR. Make sure that you save the delivery status notification code in the NDR message.

• The application event log. Set the diagnostic logging of the message categorizer to level 7.

• Message Tracking Center. Message Tracking Center can track messages in Exchange 2003 organizations and in mixed Exchange Server version 5.5 and Exchange 2000 and Exchange Server 2003 deployments. For more information about Message Tracking Center, see the Exchange Server 2003 online documentation.

• Metabase outputs. You can obtain metabase outputs by using Metabase Editor to browse through and modify attributes in the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) metabase. Metabase Editor is included with the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit.

• LDP tool outputs. You can use outputs from the LDP tool (ldp.exe) to help troubleshoot NDRs. You can use this tool to perform Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) operations against Microsoft Active Directory® directory service. The LDP tool is included with the Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server and Windows Server™ 2003 support tools.

• LDIFDE outputs. You can use outputs from LDIFDE to help troubleshoot NDRs. You can use this command-line tool to create, modify, and delete Active Directory objects. This tool is included with Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. For additional information about LDIFDE, see the Windows online documentation.

• System Monitor counters. Use the System Monitor counters for Message Categorizer to assist you with NDR troubleshooting. Message categorizer performance counters are discussed later in this section.

• Network Monitor trace. You can use Network Monitor (Netmon.exe) to capture all local network traffic, or you can select a subset of frames to capture. You can also make a capture respond to events on your network. Network Monitor is included with Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. For additional information about Network Monitor, see the Windows online documentation.

• The regtrace tool. For additional information about the Regtrace tool, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 238614, "XCON: How to Set Up Regtrace for Exchange 2000." Although this article is written for Exchange 2000, the same information applies to Exchange 2003.

ISINTEG on Exchange Server

Isinteg is a utility that searches through an offline information store for integrity weaknesses. You can also repair issues that Isinteg detects. Isinteg is run at a command prompt.
Every time I did a offline defragmentation I run ISINTEG. Every Microsoft PSS guy will agree on this.
isinteg -patch from the bin folder in Exchange 5.5 was used every time you get error -1011 while starting Information store.


In Exchange 2000/3 you must specify the database on which you are running Isinteg (for example, isinteg -s Server1 -test alltests). After you hit enter, you will get the list of offline and online database.

You can only run ISINTEG it on offline database.

When you run Isinteg on a computer that is running Exchange Server 2000/3, Isinteg first checks to see whether the MSExchangeIS service is started. If the MSExchangeIS service is not started, the following message is displayed, and Isinteg stops:
Error: unable to get databases status from server. The reason could be either wrong server name or networking problems. Isinteg quits now.If the MSExchangeIS service is started, and the target database is still mounted, you receive the following message, and Isinteg stops:
Invalid selection, this database cannot be checked (it is online). Please make another selection or try this database again later.

Offline Defrag

Why you need to defrag the database in the first place ?
Exchange Server performs a daily automated defragmentation as a part of its scheduled maintenance. While this online defragmentation helps to keep the database performing well, it does nothing to shrink the database's physical size. Instead, it leaves empty space within the database, which Exchange can later reuse. The only way to get rid of this white space and shrink the database size is to take the database offline and run the ESEUTIL /D command. (offline Defragmentation)

You can use the Eseutil utility to defragment the information store and directory in Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 and to defragment the information store in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server and in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. Eseutil is located in the Winnt\System32 folder in Exchange Server 5.5 and in the Exchsrvr/Bin folder in Exchange 2000 and in Exchange 2003. The utility can run on one database at a time from the command line.

Commands:
Defragmenting an Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 database
To defragment an Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 database, follow these
1. In Exchange System Manager, right-click the information store that you want to defragment, and then click Dismount Store.
2. At a command prompt, type the following commands, and then press ENTER after each command: cd Exchsrvr\Bineseutil /d
Include a database switch, and any options that you want to use.
For example, the following command runs the standard defragmentation utility on a mailbox store database:
C:\program files\exchsrvr\bin>eseutil /d c:\progra~1\exchsrvr\mdbdata\priv1.edb
From my experience this process will run at the speed of 5GB per Hour.
And you will need to do a isinteg after defragmentation process completes.
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Note
To defragment a database, you must have free disk space that is at least 110 percent the size of the database that you want to process. To determine the free space that is required, follow these steps:
1.
Verify that the information store service is not running.
2.
At a command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:
eseutil /ms"database.edb”
3.
Calculate the free space by multiplying the number of free pages by 4 KB.
4.
Subtract the figure that you obtained in step 3 from the physical size of the database.
5.
The figure that you obtained in step 4 represents the data in the database. Multiply this figure by 1.10 (110 %). The sum total is the space that you require to defragment the database.
Backups:
Because offline defragmentation rearranges the data in the Exchange databases, use the Backup utility immediately after defragmentation to create standard backups of the databases that secure the new data arrangement. Earlier incremental or differential backups are no longer useful because they refer to database pages that were rearranged by the defragmentation process.

Disk Space Constrain to run offline defrag ?
If you really do not have enough free space try the Eseutil /d /t "f:\temp.edb". Where the f drive has enough free space. You can also use a mapped drive but its bit risky. The LAN connection should be good and stable