Check_MK check to show some data about Ex2010 mailbox databases

A few days ago I finished to test a new check for check_mk and published it as package at Check_MK Exchange. I named the check "Ex2010_MBDB_Info". In this article I'd like to share a couple of details about the check and its functionality.

The purpose of the check is to get the size of mailbox databases and the count of the mailboxes in each of them. The check package consists of the check itself, the plugin for check_mk agent, the perf-o-meter helper file and the pnp-template.

Lock and unlock an ActiveSync device

Assume, a mobile phone or tablet device with a buggy implementation of the ActiveSync protocol causes a lot of traffic or a heavy load in your Exchange 2010 infrastructure (see this article of mine for an example). You surely could disable the ActiveSync feature for the Mailbox user to disable the access for the user completely. A better way is however to disable only the device, which causes the troubles.

Exchange management shell offers cmdlets to manage ActiveSync devices:

Exchange 2010 Mailbox Database Move

It’s very easy to move a mailbox database in Exchange 2010 to a new location. Either you use EMC or you use the cmdlet Move-DatabasePath in EMS. Exchange 2010 would unmount the mailbox database to be moved (it’s unavailable all the moving time), copy the database file, the catalogs, remove them and last mount the mailbox database and set it online.

I prefer to use the cmdlet to move the mailbox database in Exchange 2010:

Move-DatabasePath -Identity 'MailDB' -EdbFilePath 'D:\MailDB\MailDB.edb' 
                  -LogFolderPath 'D:\MailDB'

Please note that if you’re going to start moving the mailbox database by a script or batch file, you should you the following syntax to avoid questions:

Move-DatabasePath -Identity 'MailDB' -EdbFilePath 'D:\MailDB\MailDB.edb' 
                  -LogFolderPath 'D:\MailDB' -Confirm:$false -Force:$true

If you get the error while running the cmdlet:

This operation cannot be performed on a remote server. Please use the -ConfigurationOnly option and then manually move the files.
make sure that you're running the command above on the mailbox database server locally!