Exchange Mailbox Status Test

Mounting a database puts it online, thereby making its data available to users. If a mailbox database is not mounted, then users will be denied access to the mailbox data. It is therefore important that the mount status of the mailbox databases is monitored periodically.

This test reports the mount status of every mailbox database in an Exchange 2007 mailbox role-enabled server.

Target of the test : An Exchange server 2007 configured with the Mailbox role

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every Mailbox database being monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters Description

Test Period

How often should the test be executed.

Host

The IP address of the machine configured with the Mailbox server role.

Port

The port number through which the Mailbox server communicates. The default is 6001.

XchgeXtensionShellPath

The Exchange Management Shell is a command-line management interface, built on Windows PowerShell which enables you to administer every part of Microsoft Exchange. This test uses the Exchange management shell to run scripts and collect the desired performance metrics from the Exchange server. By default, the test auto-discovers the location of the Exchange management shell and thus, automatically loads the Exchange management shell snap-in (exshell.psc1) for script execution. This is why, the XchgeXtensionShellPath is set to none by default.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Mount status of mailbox

Indicates the mount status of this mailbox database.

Percent

If the value of this measure is 100, it indicates that the database is mounted. The value 0, on the other hand, implies that the database is not mounted.

  • To mount a database, typically, the user should belong to the local Administrators group for the target server and should be assigned the Exchange Server Administrator role. If the user account used for mounting does not have these privileges, then the database will not mount.
  • You can mount a database only if the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service is running. If this service is not running, then you would be unable to mount the database. 
  • An Exchange mailbox database might not be able to mount if it reaches the 16-GB limit
  • If a file-level antivirus software deletes or modifies the transaction log files, then the database might not mount.
  • Hardware issues can prevent a database from mounting.
  • If Exchange runs out of hard drive space, then the databases might not mount.
  • If hard disk NTFS file system permissions have been modified, then the databases might not mount.

An unmounted database can render critical data inaccessible to users. Commonly, mounting issues may occur owing to one/more of the following reasons: