When you run exchange 2003 BPA 1) does it ask what checks to run, or does it just run them all 2) also what format is the end report in, i.e. if its in a report like MBSA i.e. *.mbsa do you need ExBPA to view the reports, or can you output them into PDF or similar? Our managers wont have ExBPA but will want to see th reports!

1.) ExBPA will give you the option to run one of the following tests for the discovered Exchange servers in your environment: Health CheckPermission CheckConnectivity CheckBaseline You can select all servers in your Exchange Organization, a subset based on Administrative Group, or just individual servers themselves. 2.) The reports are originally returned in the ExBPA interface, but they can be exported from the tool in HTML, CSV, or XML formats. The HTML and CSV export formats only contain information on the currently displayed tab of the report, but the XML export format contains all the information within the report.

Hi, Just add some information for you: The Exchange Best Practices Analyzer programmatically collects settings and values from data repositories such as Active Directory, registry, metabase and performance monitor. Once collected, a set of comprehensive best practice rules are applied to the topology. Administrators running this tool will get a detailed report listing recommendations for changes that can be made to the environment to achieve greater performance, scalability, and uptime More information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb288481.aspx Thanks.Rowen TechNet Community Support

1.) ExBPA will give you the option to run one of the following tests for the discovered Exchange servers in your environment: Health Check Permission Check Connectivity Check Baseline You can select all servers in your Exchange Organization, a subset based on Administrative Group, or just individual servers themselves. 2.) The reports are originally returned in the ExBPA interface, but they can be exported from the tool in HTML, CSV, or XML formats. The HTML and CSV export formats only contain information on the currently displayed tab of the report, but the XML export format contains all the information within the report. Can you detail in real laymans terms what each of the 4 tests is doing? So per server to do all the features its x4 reports?

Hi, Just add some information for you: The Exchange Best Practices Analyzer programmatically collects settings and values from data repositories such as Active Directory, registry, metabase and performance monitor. Once collected, a set of comprehensive best practice rules are applied to the topology. Administrators running this tool will get a detailed report listing recommendations for changes that can be made to the environment to achieve greater performance, scalability, and uptime More information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb288481.aspx Thanks. Rowen TechNet Community Support So the reports are saved as .exbpa files? And if I take a copy of the reports can I open them if I install the software on my PC?

Hi, Just add some information for you: The Exchange Best Practices Analyzer programmatically collects settings and values from data repositories such as Active Directory, registry, metabase and performance monitor. Once collected, a set of comprehensive best practice rules are applied to the topology. Administrators running this tool will get a detailed report listing recommendations for changes that can be made to the environment to achieve greater performance, scalability, and uptime More information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb288481.aspx Thanks. Rowen TechNet Community Support So the reports are saved as .exbpa files? And if I take a copy of the reports can I open them if I install the software on my PC? Yes, if you have installed the ExchBPA on your PC.Sukh

Health Check Per ExBPA Help Topics: "The Health Check scan performs a full scan. It checks for errors, warnings, non-default configurations, recent changes, and other configuraiton information. You should run a Health Check scan if you want to check the health of your Exchange Server organization, or if you want to troubleshoot a particular problem." The Health Check scan is going to be the most common scan that you run. It is going to scan each server that you select to scan for hardware configuraiton issues such as outdated drivers for you storage and network components. It also scans the server configuration for any issues such as SSL configuration concerns, status of required services, log file configurations, and features that may be required that are missing. It will also report back any discovered issues with Active Directory for the server objects and Exchange configuraiton. This gives you a good overall view of your Exchange organization and can help identify potential areas that may be misconfigured or may be a cause of issues being experienced. It also inidicates any non-default settings detected as well as any recent changes, but the recent change report may not be too incredibly detailed to tell you excatly what was changed or who made the change. For this, you would want to consider Admin Audit logging. Permissions Check The Permissions Check reports exactly what the name implies. It searches AD and reports back information regarding the role assignments, scopes, and security groups related to Exchange. Connectivity Test Per ExBPA Help Topics: "The Connectivity Test scan tests network connections and permissions on each Exchange Server that is specified in the scope. You should run a Connectivity Test scan if you suspect a problem with permissions access or if you have firewalls in the topology. If the Conenctivity Tests is successful, you can runa a Health Check scan. The Connectivity Test scan runs very quickly. The Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer queries one registryr parameter and two Microsoft Windows Management Instrumentation classes. The first WMI query validates WMI repository access. The second WMI query queries the Active Directory directory service servers that are used by Exchange Server. After scanning all Exchange Servers that are specified in the scope, the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer tries to validate network connectivity and permissions on Active Directory servers that are used by Exchange Server." As described in the Help Topics description, the Connectivity test checks to make sure that connectivity to the AD DCs can be established and checks to see if it can discover the Exchange related objects, such as the AD site and Exchange Administrative Group. It also checks to make sure it finds the server objects for the specified servers in AD as well. The connectivity test may mislead you into thinking it is checking client access connectivity configurations, but this is not the case. It only checks the connectivity for Active Directory for the Exchange related communications. The Exchange Management Shell contains cmdlets that you can use to test client access services. Baseline Per ExBPA Help Topic: "The Baseline scan performs the follwing tasks: - It selects properties - It sets baseline values for those properties - It then selects servers on which to compare those properties The Baseline scan checks for deviations from teh baseline values that you set. The Baseline scan report identifies as baseline mismatches all properties on the selected serveers whose values are different from the source values of the selected properties." The Baseline check has a configration option that gives you the ability to set values for the configurations it scans. It would be impractical to list all these properties here, so the best thing would to just setup a Baseline check and view the options in the ExBPA. Most of the options are self-explanatory, such as Exchange Version Number or Clustered Service Started. This scan allows you to set these parameters to what should be configured in your environment, and quickly return back a list of configurations across all the selected servers that deviate from what you should have. The catch to this scan is that you need to know what you should have configured before running the scan as it wont return any useful information if you dont have these parameters set. . . . Each scan needs to be run individually, so you cannot perform the Health Check and Connectivity Test in the same report. You can set the scope of what servers are analyzed for each scan though so you dont have to run a scan per each server in your environment. If you have all servers selected, you would only result in 4 reports, one for each individual scan type, that would be all-inclusive for your entire environment.