Microsoft Exchange 2003

Post support questions that relate to the Windows 2003/2000/XP operating systems.

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deneken01
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Microsoft Exchange 2003

Post by deneken01 »

Hello,

I am trying to monitor out Exchange 2003 server via Cacti.
The things I am interested in are for now;
1. mail send
2. mail received
3. mail bounced
4. ....

I am looking for about a week or so on the forum if any one else is doing this, I also did serval SNMPwalk's on our exchange server, but all did not give me a positive result.
Can any one help me, or is it simply not going to work...

THX's
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ablyler
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perfmon counters

Post by ablyler »

If you are using cacti on a windows box, you could write a VB script to read the the perfmon counters via wmi. Or if you are using linux, you could install NSClient on the Windows box that is running the Exchange 2003 SMTP connector and then write a perl script on the linux box to gather that data from NSClient.
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deneken01
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Post by deneken01 »

Thanks for the respons.

My Cacti is running on Linux.

Does the NSclient work seamless with Exchange 2003...
If it does I will go and use this option.
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Burke
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Post by Burke »

deneken01 wrote:Thanks for the respons.

My Cacti is running on Linux.

Does the NSclient work seamless with Exchange 2003...
If it does I will go and use this option.
It sure does, but you'll likely need to change the port that NSClient uses. Once I changed the port, I was able to start monitoring just fine. Anything from the Performance Monitor becomes available. Just write a script that calls your check_nt script and use that in Cacti. See my post at TSMGSoftware.
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FragKing

Post by FragKing »

This is a cool suggestion, thanks!

I've installed NSClient on Exchange Server and the check_nt program on linux is getting the data. Now, the only thing i've to do is implement this into a script which gathers the data for cacti.

I'll let you know if it works :)

/FragKing
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Post by FragKing »

OK guys, this works seamlessly for me :)

Cacti on Linux, NSClient on Exchange Box (running default port).

Thanks for this one!

/FragKing
DevilSun
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Post by DevilSun »

FragKing, what perf counters are ya lookin at? I uploaded a few scripts here into the scripts area, but I also have some I haven't uploaded.

You can get different stats depending on whether you hook up to Exchange perf counters or the SMTP perf counters.
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deneken01
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Post by deneken01 »

Does anyone have a step by step document for me on how to set up some simple graph's.
I have installed NSclient on the Windows 2003 machine and via perfmon I am making a .csv file.

Via check_nt I am not able to make graph's ;-(


Help will be very welome


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Post by DevilSun »

As of yet, I don't believe anyone has written a .csv parser to read those values. All of the monitoring I'm doing of our Win2003 boxes are done via WMI (which there are quite a few scripts in the scripts section). They are just perl scripts which use the Ole32 monikers and directly call the WMI and return the values needed.

I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with your setup, what is the purpose of check_nt? I guess the PErl scripts won't work for you if you can't run the Ole32 monikers, since you don't have a win32 system. Sorry about that confusion.
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Burke
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Post by Burke »

So let's get this straight, you have the nsclient installed and returning values to your check_nt script, right?

If so, great.
Your next step is to write a few perl scripts that call check_nt.
See this post for more information on the scripts you can/should create.

Once you've confirmed that your scripts return the desired output, add them as data input methods to cacti.

From there, you can start creating data sources based on those input methods and graphs based on the data sources.

That's a brief overview to get you going. I don't have the time or incentive to give you a full blown tutorial on doing this.

Good luck.

-- update -- Working on template XML files to include:
HP Printer Device
- PageCount Graph & DataSource
- Toner Graph & DataSources
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Burke
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Post by Burke »

Okay, I put a little bit more work into this.. try this template for creating a new host. Once the host is created, use the New Graphs link to create the appropriate graphs.

Please let me know how this works out.
Attachments
hpprinter-host-template.xml
HP Printer Host Template
(106.59 KiB) Downloaded 849 times
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deneken01
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Post by deneken01 »

Hello all,

Thanks for all the help with this issue,

I know it took me a while for replying, but it works great..

Thanks a lot
raul.macian
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Post by raul.macian »

Which counters must be used to monitor the emails sent and so on on the perfmon ? I don´t know if must be on the SMTP connector or the ExchangeMTA :S.

Have you done some templates that you could post here?
yonie
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Post by yonie »

Burke wrote:Okay, I put a little bit more work into this.. try this template for creating a new host. Once the host is created, use the New Graphs link to create the appropriate graphs.

Please let me know how this works out.
Hi, Burke

Are you sure your template is the template for exchange 2003? It looks like a printer template
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Burke
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Post by Burke »

When that was posted, it was in another forum thread - not this one. That was quite some time ago. My guess is that either the DB here got tweaked or someone accidentally moved that post into this thread.
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