All You Ever Wanted To Know About The Exchange 2010 MP But Were Afraid To Ask…

The Exchange MP is a good example about how the MPs evolved.

Exchange 2003 MP
I won’t go into much detail, but when this MP was imported, Alerts started pouring in very quickly. So it was all hands on deck in order to get the MP functional at a reasonable and acceptable level.

Exchange 2007 MP
This MP is a huge improvement since the Monitoring needs to be switched on, step by step. So here one can introduce this MP in a phased approach. Also the Discovery Helper is a really good aid in this MP. I am still positively impressed by this MP.

Exchange 2010 MP
This MP introduced the Correlation Engine (CE). This component takes care that only the relevant Alerts come in. When a certain component of Exchange 2010 stops working many many Alerts can be generated. The CE looks at all those Alerts and decides what’s the real cause is. Those Alerts will be send out and the others won’t.

However, the CE is a component which is new in SCOM and only used by the Exchange 2010 MP. Which makes this MP special and a bit rare as well. So the MP can be a challenge to configure. Therefore Microsoft has published KB2592561 all about Guidance, Tuning and Known Issues for the Exchange 2010 MP.

This KB contains really good information. So when you have this MP in place, read the KB. It really helps.

And of course, the MP guide of the Exchange 2010 MP itself contains good information as well. So RTFM is at play here :).