Last night I heard about a cool FREE Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer that is available on the internet at https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/Default.aspx
Its an Online Wizard that will allow you to configure various test conditions. The options are several
Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Connectivity Tests
Exchange ActiveSync
ActiveSync AutoDiscover
Microsoft Exchange Web Services Connectivity Tests
Synchronization, Notification, Availability, and OOF
Service Account Access (Developers)
Microsoft Office Outlook Connectivity Tests
Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP)
Outlook AutoDiscover
Internet Email Tests
Inbound SMTP Email
Outbound SMTP Email
just wanted to pass along another free tool!
Enjoy!
Listing of late October 2009 MP Updates. New client OS MP, that inculdes Windows 7 MP.
Windows Client 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 Operating System Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F55F1803-EAE6-4ED5-B2D2-9E1ADF98E325&displaylang=en&displaylang=en
Overview
The Windows Client Monitoring Management Pack is built to detects, diagnose, and resolve hardware and software problems pertaining to Client 2000, XP, and Vista operating systems. Information and analysis on the issues that the system detected are collected by the MPs through an agent on the client machine, and sent to OpsMgr where this data is converted into health state, alerts (if need be) and processed for business critical and aggregate reports. The MP gives a clear picture of catastrophic failures in your mission critical machines, trend-based alerts of significant changes to computer groups, in-depth views of health of individual machines, and reports that provide a landscape view of the health of all monitored clients.
Feature Summary
Key Processor Performance Indicators
Logical and Physical disk performance and free space
Memory utilization
Network health
Health monitoring of key Windows Operating System services
Comprehensive performance collections
Availability and event reports
Release History
3/23/2007 - Original release of the English version of Client 2000/XP management packs, version 6.0.5000.0
5/11/2007 - Original release of the English version of Vista management pack, version 1.0
1/15/2008 - Guide update of Client 2000/XP management packs, version 6.0.5000.0
2/22/2008 - Updated release of Client 2000/XP management packs, version 6.0.6278.0
5/27/2008 - Release onto Microsoft Download Center of Client 2000/XP management packs, version 6.0.6278.0
2/16/2009 - Update release that includes business Critical monitoring for Vista and bug fixes for performance and aggregate monitoring, version 6.0.6520.0
10/26/2009 - Updated release, version 6.0.6729.0, with bug fixes for Vista MP and support for monitoring Windows 7
Operations Manager 2007 SP1 Management Pack
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5fcc1917-7ba6-4b35-a38a-5d37fcbc9ef7&displaylang=en
Overview
The Operations Manager 2007 SP1 Management Pack alerts you to problems with components such as agents, management servers, the Operations Manager database, agents, modules used by workflows and services so that you can continue to monitor the servers and clients that your business depends on.
The management pack includes tasks that you can automate to get easy access to common diagnostic tools, such as restarting a health service or reloading an agent configuration.
Feature Summary
The Operations Manager 2007 SP1 Management Packs includes the following features:
Local and Remote Monitoring of an Agent’s Health
Operations Manager agents monitor themselves for events and performance indicators that signal an issue with the agent’s health.
Management servers also maintain an external perspective of an agent’s health via the Health Service Watcher.
The ‘Agent Health State’ view provides a side-by-side dashboard of both perspectives on the agent.
Optional, Automatic Agent Remediation Capabilities
If the Health Service Watcher determines that an agent is unhealthy, a series of diagnostics and recoveries can be enabled to further diagnose the problem and event take actions to attempt to fix the problem (e.g. Ping the server to see if it is completely offline, start a stopped agent, trigger a reinstall, etc.). Refer to the management pack guide for more details.
Agents are monitoring their own process to ensure that memory utilization is not sustained at unacceptable levels. If this condition is detected then the agent will automatically restart itself to force the freeing up of memory.
Detection of Problems and Misconfigurations with Run As Accounts and Profiles
Checks are run on a regular basis to detect if any of the management group’s “Windows” type Run As Accounts have credentials which are about to expire. Alerts will be raised, and where possible this will be done in advance of the credentials expiring to avoid outages.
Alerts will be raised if any errors are encountered during the distribution of Run As Accounts.
Monitoring of problems with Running Workflows in Management Packs
Numerous rules are provided to detect if workflows within management packs are failing. Examples of workflows include discoveries, rules, monitors, etc. Failures can range from bad configurations on the workflows themselves, script failures, permissions problems, etc.
Release History
8/6/2007 – Version 6.0.5000.0, Initial release of the English version installed with the product
2/22/2008 – Version 6.0.6278.0, Updated the management pack as a part of the Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 update (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/opsmgr/cc280350.aspx).
10/26/2009 - Version 6.0.6709.0.0 – Updated the management packs and the guide. Refer to the management pack guide for a detailed change log.
Windows Server 2008 Network Load Balancing Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dc17e093-bdd7-4cb3-9981-853776ed90be&displaylang=en
Overview
The Windows Server 2008 Network Load Balancing (NLB) Management Pack provides discoveries, monitors, alerts, and warnings to help the operator understand the state of NLB clusters and NLB servers running Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The Windows Server 2008 NLB Management Pack can provide early warnings that an operator can use to proactively monitor the state of the NLB servers in the computing environment.
Feature Summary
Monitor the NLB Node status.
Based on the status of individual cluster nodes, determine the overall state of the cluster.
Where an integration management pack exists, determine the health state of a cluster node by looking at the health state of the load balanced application, such as IIS.
Alert on errors and warnings that are reported by the NLB driver, such as an incorrectly configured NLB cluster.
Take the node out of the NLB cluster if the underlying load-balanced application becomes unhealthy, and add the node back to the cluster when the application becomes healthy again.
Release History
4/27/2009 - Initial release of the English version, version 6.0.6573.0
10/22/2009 - Updated release, version 6.0.6726.0, with added support for Windows 2008 R2. Please see the Management Pack Guide for details.
Microsoft Windows Server Cluster Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=AC7F42F5-33E9-453D-A923-171C8E1E8E55&displaylang=en&displaylang=en
Overview
The Windows Server Failover Cluster Management Pack provides both proactive and reactive monitoring of your Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 cluster deployments. It monitors Cluster services components—such as nodes, networks, and resource groups—to report issues that can cause downtime or poor performance.
Feature Summary
Some of the conditions monitored by this management pack are as follows:
Configuration or hardware issues that interfere with starting the Cluster service
Connectivity problems that affect communication between cluster nodes or between a node and a domain controller
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) settings that affect the cluster; for example, permissions needed by the computer account that is used by the cluster
Configuration issues with the network infrastructure needed by the cluster; for example, issues with Domain Name System (DNS)
Issues with the availability of a cluster resource, such as a clustered file share
Issues with the cluster storage
Release History:
3/6/2008 - Version 6.0.6277.0 - Original English release
4/2/2008 - Version 6.0.6277.1 - Updated version, see MP guide for details
2/12/2009 - Version 6.0.6505.0 - Introduced support for Windows Server 2008 clusters and addressed some issues from the previous release.
4/9/2009 – Version 6.0.6568.0 – Updated Management Pack and Management Pack Guide. Please refer to the Management Pack Guide for details.
10/21/2009 - Version 6.0.6720.0 – Added support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and addressed some issues from the previous release. Please refer to the Management Pack Guide for details.
DFS Replication Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c97b22a1-1fd6-426f-94ab-2a6e6db4aed0&displaylang=en
Overview
The DFS Replication Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 monitors the health of the DFS Replication service on Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008 computers. This management pack monitors events generated by the DFS Replication service. These events provide an insight into the health of the service and folders replicated on monitored computers. This management pack includes a dashboard view which can be used to monitor replication backlogs.
The management pack also features consolidation rules that monitor computers for frequent occurrences of certain operational conditions such as staging cleanups, sharing violations, replication conflicts etc.
Feature Summary
The following features are new in this release of the DFS Replication Management Pack:
Alerts indicating outages of the DFS Replication service on monitored computers.
Alerts indicating configuration issues that require administrative intervention.
Dashboard view that enables tracking of replication backlogs on monitored computers.
Tracking of intermittent operational conditions. These conditions are tracked by the management pack and show up either as warnings/errors. Transient warnings/errors flagged for conditions that are resolved over time are automatically corrected by the management pack, once those conditions are resolved.
Intuitive state view indicating red, yellow and green states of the service, replication groups, and replicated folders configured on monitored computers.
Monitoring of important service parameters such as staging area usage and replication conflicts generated.
Release History
10/19/2009 - Version 6.0.6321.0, original release of the English version.