MAPI Monitor

The SiteScope MAPI Monitor checks a Messaging Application Program Interface (MAPI) server to confirm that e-mail operations can be executed. The SiteScope MAPI Monitor is designed to test the operation of a Microsoft Exchange Server. The error and warning thresholds for the monitor are set based on the e-mail delivery time.

Usage Guidelines

Use the MAPI Monitor to monitor the availability of Microsoft Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000, and Exchange 2003. The monitor checks for e-mail delivery time between mailboxes on an Exchange server. This is accomplished by sending and receiving a test message between a single account or two different accounts on the same MS Exchange server. A separate MAPI monitor instance must be created for each monitored Exchange server in the enterprise.

MAPI Setup Prerequisites

There are several important configuration requirements that must be performed or verified before the MAPI Monitor can be used. This section describes the steps you use to configure your environment for this monitor. The following are several definitions that are used in the steps listed below.

Local Administrator: An account that has administrative privileges on the local machine. An account can have this privilege either implicitly by having Domain Admin privileges or explicitly by adding as a member of the Administrators group on the local machine. Consult your system administrator, if necessary, for help with creating accounts.
MailBox Owner: This is an "owner" account for which an Exchange mailbox has been set up. In order to use the MAPI Monitor, this account must be a Local Administrator (see definition above) on the SiteScope server.
SiteScope User: This is the account that is used to run the SiteScope service. This account must also be a Local Administrator (see definition above).

The following setup steps must be performed before creating a MAPI Monitor:

Create mailbox accounts on each Exchange Server to be monitored with the MAPI monitor.
Exchange mailbox accounts will be used by SiteScope to measure the roundtrip time for a message to originate and arrive in a mailbox account. The MAPI Monitor setup page supports up to two mailboxes per Exchange Server. If only one mailbox is specified on the MAPI Monitor setup page the same mailbox can be used for the sender and receiver accounts. Consult your Exchange system administrator if you need help setting up mailbox accounts for use with the SiteScope MAPI monitor.
Add each Exchange Mailbox Owner to the Administrators users group on the SiteScope server.
The Mailbox Owner accounts setup in step 1, which are by definition domain logons, must be added as to the Administrators group on the SiteScope server.
1. Click Start > Settings > Control Panel > Users and Passwords > Advanced tab or open the Computer Management utility and expand the Local Users and Groups folder in the left pane and click the Groups folder.
2. Double-click the Administrators group icon to open the Administrators Properties window.
3. Click the Add button to add each Mailbox Owner you expect to use with the MAPI Monitor.
  Note: Make sure that the domain logon description is of the form domain\logon.
Install Microsoft Outlook or an equivalent MAPI 1.0 mail client on the SiteScope server.
The SiteScope server requires a MAPI 1.0 client such as Outlook XP or Outlook 2003 or later. Consult your system administrator, if necessary, for help installing a compliant MAPI client.
Configure Outlook for the MailBox User
After logging in to the SiteScope server as the MailBox User created in step 1 the Outlook wizard may start for setting up an Outlook profile for the mail box. If an Outlook client is already installed, then you may run that Outlook client and click Tools > e-mail Accounts to create a profile for the mailbox/logon you intend to use with the MAPI Monitor. See your Exchange System administrator for help configuring an Outlook client on your SiteScope server if necessary.

Creating an Outlook profile is not necessary, although it may be helpful for the purpose of troubleshooting. Once the wizard prompts you to set up a profile you can cancel to exit the wizard.
Verify that the SiteScope User logon is a member of Administrators group or a domain administrator account.
Important: The SiteScope User account must be a Local Administrator or be a member of the domain admins group.

To change the logon account for the SiteScope User
1. Open the Services control utility on the SiteScope server.
2. Right-click the SiteScope service entry and click Properties. The SiteScope Properties settings screen opens.
3. Click the Logon properties tab.
4. Verify that the SiteScope User is run as a member of Administrators group or a domain logon account. To change the logon properties, click the This account radio button and enter the SiteScope User logon.
5. Restart the SiteScope server after making changes to the SiteScope service logon account.
Add the SiteScope User account to the "Act as part of the operating system" local security policy.
To add the SiteScope User account to the "Act as part of the operating system" local security policy.
1. Click Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy. The Local Security Policy panel opens.
2. Click the Local Policies folder in the left pane and then click the User Rights Assignments folder to display the list of policies.
3. Double-click the "Act as part of the operating system" policy item in the right pane. The Local Security Policy Setting list opens.
4. If the SiteScope User is not in the list of logons for this security policy setting then it must be added now. Click the Add button to bring up the Select Users or Groups dialogue window.
5. Enter the SiteScope User logon using the domain\logon format if the SiteScope User is a domain account.
6. After adding the SiteScope service logon you must reload the security settings. To do this, right-click the Security Settings root folder in the left pane and click Reload.
7. Restart the SiteScope service after making changes to security policy.

The default run schedule for this monitor is every 10 minutes, but you can change it to run more or less often using the Update every setting.

Completing the MAPI Monitor Form

To display the MAPI Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing MAPI Monitor in a monitor table, or click the add a Monitor link on a group's detail page and click the Add MAPI Monitor link.

Complete the items on the MAPI Monitor form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.

Server: Enter the hostname or address of a Microsoft Exchange Server. The name can be an IP address or other name that can be resolved by the DNS server. It is recommended that you copy the server name as it appears in the Properties of the e-mail account you will be using with this monitor.
Mailbox: Enter the name (alias) of the mailbox to be used for this monitor. This is often the e-mail account name but it may be a different name. It is recommended that you copy the mailbox name as it appears in the E-Mail Account properties for the e-mail account you will be using with this monitor.
Domain: Enter the domain to which both the owner of the mailbox being used and the Microsoft Exchange server belong.
Note: The owner of the mailbox to be used by this monitor must also have administrative account privileges on the machine where SiteScope is running. SiteScope also needs user account access to the domain where the Microsoft Exchange server is running.
User Name: Enter the NT account login name for the user associated with the above e-mail account.
User Password: Enter the NT account login password for the user name above.
Update every: Select how often the monitor should read the logs and statistics. The default interval is to run or update the monitor once every 10 minutes. Use the drop-down list to the right of the text box to specify another update interval in increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. The update interval must be 15 seconds or longer.
Title: Enter a title text for this monitor. This text is displayed in the group detail page, in report titles, and other places in the SiteScope interface. If you do not enter a title text, SiteScope will create a title based on the host, server, or URL being monitored.

Advanced Options

The Advanced Options section presents a number of ways to customize monitor behavior and display. Use this section to customize error and warning thresholds, disable the monitor, set monitor-to-monitor dependencies, customize display options, and enter other monitor specific settings required for special infrastructure environments. The options for this monitor type are described below. Complete the entries as needed and click the Add or Update button to save the settings.

Disable

Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.

Transaction timeout

Enter the number of seconds for the monitor to wait for the message to arrive before the monitor should timeout. The monitor will report an error if timeout value is met before the e-mail message is delivered.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

Update Every (on error)

You use this option to set a new monitoring interval for monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally, but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of alerts generated by this monitor.

Schedule

By default, SiteScope monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Click the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For more information about working with monitor schedules, see the section on Schedule Preferences for Monitoring.

Monitor Description

Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR> <HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.

Report Description

Enter an optional description for this monitor that will make it easier to understand what the monitor does. For example, network traffic or main server response time. This description will be displayed on with each bar chart and graph in Management Reports and appended to the tool-tip displayed when you pass the mouse cursor over the status icon for this monitor on the monitor detail page.

Depends On

To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select the monitor on which this monitor is dependent. Select None to remove any dependency.

Depends Condition

If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor, select the status condition that the other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally as long as the monitor on which it depends reports the condition selected in this option.

List Order

By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Setting Monitor Status Thresholds

SiteScope Application Monitors allow you to set multiple threshold conditions to determine the status reported by each monitor. The individual conditions are combined as logical OR relationships so that when one or more of the conditions (for example any of the conditions for Error if) are met the monitor status is set to the applicable condition. If multiple conditions are met for more than one status condition (such as conditions for both error and for warning), the status for the monitor is set to the highest valued condition. Thus a match of an error condition and a warning condition would be reported as an error status, error being the highest value, warning the next highest and good the lowest value.

Error if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more error conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change error threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. After choosing a counter or parameter, use the comparison operator drop-down list to specify an error threshold such as: >= (greater than or equal to), != (not equal to), or < (less than) and enter a comparison value in the box provided. Comparison values should be entered as whole numbers.
Warning if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more warning conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change warning threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. Set these values relative to those you set for the error threshold in the Error if item.
Good if: You can set this monitor to return a good status for certain conditions. You may define those conditions here. Complete this item as you would for the Error if and Warning if items.