System Management Checklist

You should check the following items on your Microsoft Exchange Server computer regularly. The list is divided into daily, weekly, monthly, and periodic maintenance tasks.

For more information, see Microsoft Exchange Server Maintenance and Troubleshooting and Microsoft Exchange Server Concepts and Planning.

Daily Maintenance Tasks

• Examine Microsoft Windows NT Performance Monitor counters.
• Monitor services and links.
• Back up your data.
• Purge unneeded transaction log files. Monitor the Edb*.log files in the Dsadata and Mdbdata directories to check for build up of transaction log files.

Warning    Do not manually delete the Edb*.log files. To remove these files, perform a full or an incremental backup or turn on circular logging.

• Check available disk space.
• Check the Alerter service.

Weekly Maintenance Tasks

• Check event logs for errors and warnings.
• Check for message tracking log file buildup.
• Verify that public folders are being replicated.

Monthly Maintenance Tasks

• Validate information store backups by restoring them to an alternate server that is not part of your organization.

Periodic Maintenance Tasks

• Run information store maintenance. Check the IS Maintenance property page for the server object in the directory to ensure that maintenance routines run during off-peak hours and at least once per day.
• Defragment the server offline. Take the server offline and use the defragmentation utility (Eseutil.exe) to defragment the directory and information store.
• Check mailbox and public folder use as follows:
  • Check the Logons property pages in the private and public information stores.
  • Check the Mailbox Resources and Public Folder Resources property pages to see how individual users and public folders are using storage space.
• Check storage limits. Monitor storage limit settings on mailboxes and public folders. You might need to adjust these limits periodically for specific users or public folders.