In 2004, Microsoft took the first of many steps to improve the operation of Exchange installations by introducing Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA), a tool that analyzes your Exchange organization by using rules that Microsoft regularly updates, to highlight misconfigurations and variations from best practice. Microsoft used the same concept in building Exchange Server Performance Troubleshooting Analyzer (ExPTA) 1.0, a multistep wizard tool that's based on ExBPA's framework. ExPTA collects configuration information, performance-counter data, and live tracing information from your Exchange server environment; analyzes that information; and identifies problems and possible solutions. ExPTA is easy to download, install, and operate, and it can benefit businesses of all sizes. Let's look at what you need to get this tool, how to install it, and how it works.
ExPTA Requirements
With one exception that I explain later in the "Analyzing RPC Activity" section, you should install ExPTA on a different system from the one you want to analyze; when you run ExPTA, you'll select the Exchange servers to analyze. Microsoft recommends running ExPTA on a Windows XP system, but you can also run the tool on Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 Server, and Windows 2000 Professional. ExPTA requires a system that has a 133MHz or higher processor (I've found that 1GHz or higher is a more realistic requirement), a minimum of 256MB of memory (and an additional 256MB for every 50 Exchange servers under analysis), and 10MB of disk space (and an additional 2MB per server under analysis). If you have more than 100 Exchange servers in your environment, you should use dual-processor systems to host ExPTA.
ExPTA analyzes both mixed-mode and native-mode Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange 2000 Server environments, but it doesn't analyze pure Exchange Server 5.5 environments. ExPTA works with all Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2000 service packs that are supported on Windows 2003 and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP3) and higher platforms. ExPTA took about five minutes to run in my relatively small test environment consisting of a few single-CPU servers, but you might find that on more complex environments with larger servers, ExPTA takes a little longer to run. In addition, you can use ExPTA to analyze only Exchange systems that have Windows .NET Framework 1.1 and a US English OS installed.
Installing ExPTA
You can download ExPTA from the Exchange TechCenter Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/downloads/2003/tools.mspx). Select the Exchange Server Performance Troubleshooting Analyzer download, and save the file (ExPTA.msi) to your local system. The ExPTA.msi file is a mere 3.6MB and doesn't take too long to download.
When you install ExPTA by double-clicking the ExPTA.msi file, you're prompted for two file-system locations. The first location, the installation directory (which by default is C:\Program Files\ExPTA), contains the ExPTA binaries and program files, and the second is the ExPTA data directory (which, if you install the tool using the Administrator account, by default is C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Microsoft\ExPTA). Although the installation default is to install the ExPTA program files on the system disk partition, don't select the system partition to hold the data files. ExPTA generates some data files as it runs, including data it gathers from remote Exchange systems, which the analysis engine then processes. Microsoft advises that you choose another storage location for the data directory to ensure the best possible performance of the tool. In general, when installing the tool on an XP workstation or an Exchange server itself, make sure that you allot sufficient space for the data files on the drives so that you won't run into space problems as ExPTA gathers data.
The account from which you run ExPTA needs to have at least Domain User permissions for the Global Catalog (GC) server to which you're connecting. (Because ExPTA uses Active Directory (AD) to retrieve configuration information about an Exchange organization, the first time you run ExPTA you need to specify a GC server to which ExPTA can connect before it gathers any performance information.) Similarly, the account should be a member of the local Administrators group on each Exchange server that ExPTA will analyze; otherwise ExPTA can't access the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and registry information. When connecting to the GC, you may specify additional credentials if the account from which you're running ExPTA lacks the appropriate permissions.
Capturing the Information
ExPTA uses a variety of sources to capture data, specifically AD and WMI. ExPTA uses AD to obtain various items of configuration information about the Exchange servers it's analyzing and registry information about specific Exchange servers. ExPTA also uses WMI to collect some information, such as I/O performance counters. Exchange 5.5's lack of available WMI facilities partially explains why that platform isn't supported in its own right. (ExPTA can collect a limited amount of information for Exchange 5.5 servers in mixed Exchange 2003, Exchange 2000, and Exchange 5.5 environments.) Therefore, ExPTA won't provide as comprehensive a report on Exchange 5.5 systems as on Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2000 systems.
Updating Configuration Files
After you've installed ExPTA, you can run it from Start, All Programs, Microsoft Exchange, Performance Troubleshooting Analyzer. Whenever you run ExPTA, it checks for updates on the Checking for Updates Web page that Figure 1 shows. You can cancel the check by clicking the Cancel this check button at any time during the update check. You can suppress ExPTA's configuration file-update checks by clearing the Check for updates on startup box on the Configuration Options page. You might want to suppress update checks if you run ExPTA on a system that has no Internet connection and is used solely for managing the Exchange environment. By doing so, you'll avoid timeouts that could occur during the unnecessary update checks.
ExPTA's initial shipping version (i.e., 1.0) has a 1.0.3.0 configuration file version. You can see this version number at around line 18 in the ExPTA.Config.xml configuration file, which is located in C:\Program Files\ ExPTA\en, assuming you chose the default installation location. As ExPTA starts up, it checks its version number against the Web version of the ExPTA.Config.xml file on the Checking for Updates Web page. If the Web version is higher, signifying that a more recent configuration file is available, you're prompted to download the updated version, although you can decline the download if you want. The most recent version (at the time of writing) was 1.2.1.0. (If you look through the rest of the ExPTA.Config.xml file, you'll see evidence of the tool's kinship with ExBPA in the many references to the ExBPA tool's naming structures found throughout the file.)
If you want to download and install updated configuration files, you must be logged on to an account with administrative permissions on the system on which you're running ExPTA. Also, ExPTA can't download configuration files if you use a proxy server that requires a username and password to connect to the Internet.