Exchange Server Pro » ExBPA

How to Schedule an Exchange BPA Scan in Exchange Server 2010

Paul Cunningham — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 09:00:00 +0000

The Exchange Best Practices Analyzer is a useful tool for Exchange Server 2010 environments for identifying problems or misconfigurations in the environment. I will often run an Exchange BPA scan as the first step troubleshooting problems when they aren’t a clear cut solution.

This means that it can be desirable to automate the running of the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer so that regular reports are produced, which can make it easier to trace the time when a problem began occurring or even automated the parsing of the results for alerting purposes.

Scheduling an Exchange BPA Scan

To schedule an Exchange Best Practices Analyzer scan launch the ExBPA tool from the Toolbox in the Exchange Management Console.

When connecting to Active Directory click the option to Show advanced login options.

Connect to Active Directory in the Exchange BPA

Enter administrative credentials that meet the minimum level of access required by the Exchange BPA. In this example I am using the Administrator account, however in a production environment you would ideally create a lower privilege account with the minimum required access. Note that the domain name needs to be entered as the NetBIOS name, not the FQDN.

Enter administrative credentials to connect to Active Directory and Exchange

Configure your scan options and then click on Schedule a Best Practices scan.

Schedule an Exchange Best Practices Scan

Tick the box to Enable scan scheduling and set a start time and run frequency. When you have configured the schedule click on Save and Exit this tool.

Configure the scan schedule for the Exchange BPA

The Exchange Best Practices Analyzer configures a scheduled task on the server that can be viewed in Task Scheduler.

The Exchange Best Practices Analyzer scheduled task

The scheduled task action for Exchange Best Practices Analyzer

At the scheduled date and time the Exchange BPA scan will run. The resulting XML and TXT report files will be stored in the %appdata%\Roaming\Microsoft\ExBPA folder on the server, for example C:\Users\administrator\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\ExBPA.

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Exchange Best Practices Analyzer Reports Unrecognized Exchange Signature

Paul Cunningham — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:00:17 +0000

After the transition to Exchange Server 2010 the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer will report a critical error of “Unrecognized Exchange signature”.

ExBPA may report the unrecognized signature as 12639. The error may lead you to believe that the Active Directory Schema has not been properly prepared for Exchange Server 2010.

Unfortunately Microsoft Technet has contradictory advice on this error.

The Exchange Server 2010 planning and deployment documentation stats that 12640 is the correct schema version for Exchange 2010 RTM.

The objectVersion property is in the CN=, CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC= container. The objectVersion value for Exchange 2010 RTM is 12640.

However the ExBPA documentation says that 12639 is the correct schema version for Exchange 2010 RTM.

For Exchange Server 2010, the objectVersion value is 12639

As it turns out the error is the result of a bug in ExBPA, according to Jetze Mellema (an MVP).

I just received feedback from the ExBPA team, this is a known issue now and will be fixed in SP1 for Exchange 2010.

So the error can be ignored and will be fixed with Service Pack 1. Beta testers of SP1 are already saying that the problem no longer occurs in that build of the ExBPA. It would be useful to backport the fix to the current ExBPA version, and shouldn’t be all that difficult considering the ExBPA has its own builtin update feature, but it seems we just need to wait instead.

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Exchange Best Practices Analyzer Reports Default Global Address List Missing

Paul Cunningham — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:00:38 +0000

I always run the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer at the end of a transition project to Exchange Server 2007 or 2010, just to catch any issues that still might exist in the organization.

One of the issues I have encounted a few times is that the ExBPA will report the Default Global Address List missing.

This error is confusing if you simply look at your Address Lists in the organization and can clearly see the Default Global Address List is present. However if you dig a little deeper in the Exchange Management Shell you can see the problem:

[PS] C:\Admin>Get-GlobalAddressList | fl

IsDefaultGlobalAddressList   : False
Name                         : Default Global Address List

As you can see the IsDefaultGlobalAddressList attribute is set to false. Unfortunately this is not as simple to fix as just running Set-GlobalAddressList, as there is no argument for that cmdlet to change that attribute.

Instead you must modify the attribute using ADSIEdit.msc. Launch ADSIEdit.msc and connect to the Configuration naming context.

Navigate to the Default Global Address List object. You’ll find it in CN=Configuration,dc=yourdomain/CN=Services/CN=Microsoft Exchange/CN=yourorganization/CN=Address Lists Container/CN=All Global Address Lists. Open the properties of the GAL object.

Find the msExchRecipientFilterFlags attribute in the list.

Edit the attribute value and set it to 3.

Press OK and then apply the changes.

You may need to wait a short time for Active Directory to replicate the change. When you query the Default Global Address List properties now you should see that IsDefaultGlobalAddressList is set to True, and ExBPA will not report this error in future scans.

[PS] C:\Admin>Get-GlobalAddressList | fl

IsDefaultGlobalAddressList   : True
Name                         : Default Global Address List

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Exchange Server Pro » ExBPA

How to Schedule an Exchange BPA Scan in Exchange Server 2010

Scheduling an Exchange BPA Scan

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