To set a label for the scan, on the Start a New Best Practices Scan page, in the Enter an identifying label for the scan box, enter a unique label. If you later choose to view an existing report, you can identify the reports by the label that you enter in the Enter an identifying label for the scan box.

You can view an existing report in two ways:

• On the Welcome page, choose Select a Best Practices report to view.
  
  
• In the left navigation pane in the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer window, choose Select a scan to view.
  
  

To specify the scope of the scan, on the Start a New Best Practices Scan page, select the servers or administrative groups that you want to scan.

You can choose from three scopes:

• You can select the whole Exchange Server organization.
  
  
• You can select one or more administrative groups.
  
  
• You can select one or more servers from any administrative group in the Exchange Server organization.
  
  

Next, you choose the type of scan. You can choose from three types of scans:

• Health Check
  
  
• Health/Performance Check
  
  
• Connectivity Test
  
  
• Baseline
  
  

The Health Check scan performs a full scan. It checks for errors, warnings, non-default configurations, recent changes, and other configuration information. You should run a Health Check scan if you want to check the health of your Exchange Server organization, or if you want to troubleshoot a particular problem.

The Health/Performance Check scan performs the Health Check scan then proceeds to sample a range of Exchange Server performance counters over a two hour period of time.

The Connectivity Test scan tests network connections and permissions on each Exchange Server that is specified in the scope. You should run a Connectivity Test scan if you suspect a problem with permissions access or if you have firewalls in the topology. If the Connectivity Test is successful, you can run a Health Check scan.

The Connectivity Test scan runs very quickly. The Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer queries one registry parameter and two Microsoft Windows® Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes. The first WMI query validates WMI repository access. The second WMI query queries the Active Directory® directory service servers that are used by Exchange Server. After scanning all Exchange Servers that are specified in the scope, the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer tries to validate network connectivity and permissions on Active Directory servers that are used by Exchange Server.

The Baseline scan performs the following tasks:

• It selects properties.
  
  
• It sets baseline values for those properties.
  
  
• It then selects servers on which to compare those properties.
  
  

The Baseline scan checks for deviations from the baseline values that you set. The Baseline scan report identifies as baseline mismatches all properties on the selected servers whose values are different from the source values of the selected properties.

To run a Baseline scan

1. On the Start a New Best Practices Scan page, on the Select the type of scan to perform menu, select Baseline, and then click Baseline Options.

2. On the Baseline Options menu, select an existing scan or type a new label.

3. Click the Source values arrow to expand the list of baseline properties.

   • These properties are the properties that the ExBPA.config.xml file gathers. Choose which properties to compare in the Baseline scan by clearing or setting the check boxes. The values of the properties are the default values from the ExBPA.config.xml file. Set these values in the text boxes.
     
     

4. Click the Test objects arrow to expand the list of servers to scan.

5. Select all servers that you want to scan for baseline mismatches.

After you have selected the type of scan, you set the network speed. To set the network speed, select one of the four options:

• Fast LAN
  
  
• LAN
  
  
• Fast WAN
  
  
• WAN
  
  

You use the network speed setting to estimate the time that is required to complete the scan. You also use the network speed setting to set the time-out value.

During the scan, the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer waits for a response from a server for a specified time. If it does not receive a response in the specified time-out, the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer moves on to complete the scan, instead of continuing to wait. On slower networks, this specified time-out is longer to account for longer network latencies. It is recommended that you select the slowest link in your topology for this parameter so that the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer does not time out too quickly.

After you have set all the options for a scan, you can choose either Start scanning or Schedule a Scan. If you choose Start scanning, the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer starts scanning the Exchange organization immediately. For more information, see Scanning the Exchange Organization.

If you choose Schedule a Scan, you see the Schedule a Scan page. To schedule a scan, you must first enter the required security credentials and select the Enable scan scheduling box. For more information on entering the required security credentials, see Setting Up the Scan.

Next, you set the start time. The start time is the day and time that the first scheduled scan will run.

Finally, you must set the frequency. The frequency is how often scheduled scans will run. To close the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer, click Exit this tool. The Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer does not have to be running for the scheduled scan to run. If you exit the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer, the scheduled scan runs in the background at the specified date and time. To view the report from a scheduled scan, you must restart the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer.

Concepts

Types of Output Information

Other Resources

Scanning the Exchange Organization