NOTE: Version 1.0 of the EXDSD has now been replaced by version 1.01 – all links have been updated to reflect the changes and details of the update can be found here.
I have been working for a while on a new tool called the EXDSD (Exchange 2013 DAG Status Dashboard).
I had two main reasons for writing this tool:
- The concept of DAG has had a number of cool modifications added to Exchange 2013 – naturally this means that there are (and being honest – always have been) a number of component parts which constitute the overall healthy operation of Exchange Database HA.
Given the above – unless you have a dedicated commercial monitoring tool, it can be hard to keep an eye on the full health of DAG services all in one place – so I wanted to produce something that provides a “one stop look” of the main components of each DAG node and the overall DAG.
- The process of placing and removing Exchange 2013 DAGs from maintenance mode has changed significantly since Exchange 2010 – where the well known Microsoft supplied startDAGServerMaintenance.ps1 and stopDAGServerMaintenance.ps1 have been depreciated and replaced by a much more detailed set of PowerShell based servicing cmdlets.
A number of noted Exchanged experts (see acknowledgements at the end of this article) have provided excellent scripts which show you how to do this – but I thought that it would be cool to adapt their work by implementing modified versions of these scripts into a web interface.
Pre-Requisites
The following are the pre-requisites for the EXDSD:
- Windows Server 2012
- IIS 8.0
- .NET Framework 4.0
- Exchange 2013 RTM or CU1 and above
- Exchange 2013 Management Tools installed on the primary EXDSD server
- The EXDSD Application Service Account will require Exchange Organization Management rights which is configured as part of the installation.
- It is recommended that you install the EXDSD on a DAG node within your Exchange 2013 environment.
- Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 9 – 10
- Apple Safari – 5.x
- Mozilla Firefox version 21 and above.
Please note: – that the EXDSD is not designed to run on any version of Windows Server prior to 2012 nor is compatible with any previous version of Exchange prior to Exchange 2013 RTM.
The EXDSD has been tested on the following client operating systems:
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Microsoft Windows 7 and 8 – x32 and x64
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Apple Mac OS 10 and above
-
iOS 6 and above
Download
[ EXDSD – Version 1.01 – 350KB ]
[ EXDSD – Installation and Users Guide – 800KB ]
What’s missing?
At the moment the EXDSD does not support monitoring of any aspect of the DAG network. This will be released in version 1.01 of the EXDSD.
Screenshots
Database and Database Activation Status Monitoring
Exchange Service, Cluster and DAG node status
Acknowledgements
The EXDSD has been developed over a period of six months, and would not have been possible without the efforts from the following people – who may not have directly contributed to the project – but their own work was intrinsic to its release:
- Adam Driscoll [ PowerShell MVP ] – Owner / Author of http://csharpening.net/ – for his awesome C# Dynamic Runtime code sample for PowerShell 3.0 – and for being a generally all around good guy by answering some of my questions.
- Michael Van Horenbeeck [ Exchange MVP ] – Owner / Author of http://michaelvh.wordpress.com for his excellent coverage of putting Exchange 2013 into a maintenance state.
- Brian Reid [ Exchange MVP and Exchange Certified Solutions Master ] – Owner / Author of http://blog.c7solutions.com for his original article on placing Exchange 2013 maintenance mode back in October 2012.
Testing
Inevitably there will be bugs found in any software tool – therefore I would like to thank Shawn Harry (http://www.shawnharry.co.uk/) for taking the time to test early builds of the EXDSD.
If any of you should find any issues – or have any suggestions, please feel free to pass them over to me via the comments or contact sections.