Topic Last Modified: 2005-07-08
The Microsoft® Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool scans the computers in the Exchange organization that are within the scope that you select. It compares configuration settings to the set of recommended best practices, and reports results.
While the scanning is in progress, the progress bar updates dynamically, displaying the percent of the entire scan that is completed. The percentage is based on the amount of data to collect for the particular type of scan, and the number of servers within the scope of the scan.
The Estimated Time Remaining updates dynamically, and is recalculated every 60 seconds. The Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer is multi-threaded, so that it can scan more than one Exchange server at a time. The Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer scans computers from up to 10 administrative groups at the same time, and scans up to 50 Exchange servers simultaneously. Additional servers are queued and scanned as others finish.
The Server scanning details window shows the state of each server selected for scanning. Servers can be in one of three states: Pending, In Progress, or Completed. If a server is in the In Progress state, a progress bar displays its percent complete. After a server is in the Completed state, an icon will indicate if the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer was able to access the server. A green check mark icon indicates that the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer was able to access the server and did not fail or exceed time-out thresholds during the scan. A yellow warning icon indicates that the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer was able to access the server, but the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer either failed or exceeded a time-out threshold during the scan. A red X icon indicates that the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer was not able to access the server and the server was not scanned.
In addition to gathering data from the Exchange servers, the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer must gather data from the Active Directory® directory service. The progress of gathering data from Active Directory is shown as part of the progress bar and the Estimated Time Remaining at the top of the page, but not in the Server scanning details window. Therefore, the overall status of the scan may be progressing even if all the Exchange servers are in Pending or Completed states.
After the Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer completes scanning all the servers selected, you can open the View Best Practices Report page.
