How many times each day do you get asked, “Is there a problem with the Exchange server?

If you’re like me then you get asked this question at least once per day. Of course there usually isn’t anything wrong with our Exchange servers 😉 but once the question has been asked then you have no choice but to investigate and confirm that everything is okay.

In this article I’m going to demonstrate how you can quickly check the health of your Exchange Server 2010 mailbox servers, and share a script with you that can help to speed up this task.

Note: a better version of this script is now available here.

Exchange Server 2010 has a series of PowerShell cmdlets that make it easy to do a health check of mailbox servers. For example, we can:

That’s quite a few cmdlets to run, especially if we’ve got more than one mailbox server in the organization. And of course each of those cmdlets needs to run and show you output that you need to interpret.

I like to make life a bit easier and use PowerShell scripts to speed up these types of tasks. So naturally I put together a script for performing all of the above tests (and a few more) on my mailbox servers and display a nice simple colour-coded output so that I can tell at a glance whether there might be a problem.

This isn’t designed to do a diagnosis of any problems, it just checks the fundamentals and gives me a simple pass/fail and a few other indicators that I can then troubleshoot further if necessary.

Note: a better version of this script is now available here.

Extract Test-MailboxServer.ps1 from the Zip file and run it in your Exchange Management Shell to see output such as this:

How to Health Check an Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server

If you have any questions or bugs to report please let me know in the comments below.

Change log:

  • V1.0, 20/11/2011 – Initial version
  • V1.1, 10/01/2011 – Fixed $null’s, bugs with Recovery DBs, and ping failure scenarios

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About the Author

Paul Cunningham

Paul is a former Microsoft MVP for Office Apps and Services. He works as a consultant, writer, and trainer specializing in Office 365 and Exchange Server. Paul no longer writes for Practical365.com.

Comments

  1. Dwayne West

    Hey Paul,

    is there away to get the up-time in days and not hours? and if yes what would i add to the existing script.

    just like everyone here this script is GREAT! i just need to add this one thing for my Boss.

  2. avinash thakur

    i have changed the SMTP setting but still mails not getting triggred. Do i have to make any other changes in script.

  3. Rudra

    Hello Paul Cunningham

    Great script, Thanks for sharing, email not received, how to solve this ?

    Awaiting for your reply, Please do the needful

    Thanks again
    Rudra

  4. Ruban

    HI,
    i am getting Error on Test-Mailflow.. how to solve this ?

    [PS] C:WINDOWSsystem32>Test-Mailflow

    RunspaceId : dd3454e4-ab48-4daa-a7f5-c74a21cccf5d
    TestMailflowResult : *FAILURE*
    MessageLatencyTime : 00:00:00
    IsRemoteTest : False
    Identity :
    IsValid : True

  5. Andy Cordiner

    Hi Paul.
    Thanks again for another great article.

    In an environment where all databases in the DAG are mounted on a single DAG member would test-mailflow always give *Failure*
    Does it have to be able to send between mailboxes on separate servers to succeed?

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Yep, if I recall correctly if there’s no active databases on a server then the mail flow test will fail. I thought I had accounted for that and replaced the failure with an “n/a”. Are you using the latest version of Test-ExchangeServerHealth.ps1 from TechNet/Github?

      1. Andy Cordiner

        That’s great thanks. No, was just curious, as noticed that running the individual command always gave a *Failure* and was concerned that there was an issue somewhere.

        Really appreciate the response.
        Thanks again

  6. Poulomi Ghosh

    Hey Paul, this works perfectly. Thanks a lot !!

    On the public folders part, I had used the wrong word “decommissioned”, it was actually never in there. But the PFDB was there which has been dismounted recently. Please let me know if it still may cause us some issues leaving it in dismounted state in long run if we never had or plan to have public folders.

    Thanks a ton.

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      “…it was actually never in there. But the PFDB was there…”

      Now I’m confused. Either the public folder database exists or it doesn’t.

      If it exists and you want to decommission it completely, don’t just leave it dismounted.

  7. Poulomi Ghosh

    Hi Paul,

    In our environment, since Public Folders have been decommissioned, we have dismounted the public folder database. Is there a way we can remove the alert for public folder database dismounted on this script?
    I have tried adding it to the ignore.txt file but that does not help.

    Kindly suggest.

    Thanks!!

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      You could take the Get-PublicFolderDatabase line out of the script.

      But I would suggest to you that dismounting the PF database is not the same as properly removing public folders from your organization. Leaving it in that state is likely to cause you issues in the long term.

  8. Khan

    Hi Sir,

    I was successful in installing exchange server 2013 sp1 on windows server 2012r2.After that i restarted my server and entered administrator credentials in the eac ,i am getting http error : 500 internal server error. and nothing is displayed on the page.

  9. Bill - NCC

    Brill little script, well not so little, helped fix some minor issues on the service.

    I need to schedule this script so it sends a report to another team, I know there is something I can do so it automatically sends the report but I cannot find the right bit. Any chance of sending me the code.

    Again excellent script.
    Bill

  10. Lynn

    Greate Article. Paul. It helps.

  11. sam

    HI Paul, great script thank you. one issue though,

    The script can not send email notifications when a vital service like the transport service is off if the smtp settings used are for the internal server and the environment has only one server, how can the smtp setting be changed to accommodate external smtp settings like for google that may require authentication.

    thank you.

  12. Jose RIos

    HI Paul,

    I have just one server (mbx, hub and cas) and i’m getting this error:

    Add-Member : Cannot bind argument to parameter ‘name’ because it is null.

    Note: I,m running it on the same server where exchange 2010 is installed (windows 2008 r1)

    Any idea?

    Regards

    JO

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Run the script with the -Log switch and then email me the log file to paul at practical365.com and I can take a closer look. If possible attach one of the report emails as well so I can see the HTML results too.

  13. Roshan

    Hi Mate

    Thanks for the script!!!

    Have a good day.

    Cheers
    Rosh

  14. Brian

    i noticed that once the script finds a mail server with a high copy/replay count (like a lagged database copy server), all the remaining servers after that are also shown in red, even though they do not have this issue. I don’t believe that variable is being reset in your loop through the server list 🙂

    Another issue, when i pass a server name at the command line instead of letting it run through all of our servers, the mail flow test fails with:

    Mail flow test: Skip, no active mailbox databases
    Cannot bind argument to parameter ‘Server’ because it is null.
    + CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (:) [Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus], ParameterBindingValidationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentValidationErrorNullNotAllowed,Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus

      1. Sami

        Hi Paul,
        Thanks for the new script link. Can you please send me the command that how i can check and test the incoming and outgoing emails on the exchange server 2010.

  15. Anant

    I am Sorry. i forgot to mention the script i am using.

    Its Test-ExchangeServerHealth.ps1

    Thanks

      1. Anant

        Thanks.

  16. Anant

    Hi Paul,

    Thank you for the script. It is working fine.
    I just wanted to add two more colums LatestFullBackupTime and LatestIncrementalBackupTime

    I tried hard but no luck.(I dont have much idea about scripting)

    Could you please suggest

    Thanks in advance

    Anant

  17. Sepehr Kazemi

    Hey.
    My Exchange 2013 was working pretty well. After I deployed Sharepoint 2013, exchange got broken. First it was Port issue. I changed sharepoint’s. Now Exchange PowerShell Connects without a problem. running your script, it only shows dismounted mailbox failure and not checking mounted one. Running Test-MailFlow, It shows Failure. I’m talking general? I know, but any suggestion?

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      You’ve installed Sharepoint on the Exchange server? I don’t recommend you do that. I’ve never tried it myself, so I have no idea what exactly it will break and how to work around it.

  18. Anna

    Thanks for a great script.
    🙂

  19. CMRamos

    I like the script, BUT it does not properly reflect DAG health. As noted below, your script shows everything Passed, but when we ran Test-ReplicationHealth the QuorumGroup check failed with an error on the DAG. Something to include in a future revision is Replication Health.

    —— Checking MBXP01
    DNS Check: Pass
    Server up: Pass
    Uptime (hrs): 2
    Server version: Exchange 2010
    Roles: Mailbox
    Mailbox Server Role Services: Pass
    Public Folder databases mounted: Pass
    Mailbox databases mounted: Pass
    MAPI connectivity: Pass
    Mail flow test: Success

  20. Aditya Prasad

    Hi Paul,
    How to run the script for individual mailbox server , i mean where to modify the script.

  21. San

    Hi Paul,

    This is wonderful script. It made my monitoring much easier. Please keep up with your good scripting work.

    Thanks Once again.

  22. ZEFel

    in polish enviroment i’ve got ‘powodzenie’ (means success) in red color – Mail flow test: Powodzenie

  23. SunnyLowe

    Great Scipt man! We use it all the time. Really appreciate the Go-Giver mentality!

    Sunny Lowe

  24. Ramki

    Hi Paul

    Also we daily running command to get the item count for journal mailbox

    get-mailboxstatistics -identity “Journal Mailbox Name” | select itemcount

    Can be include in this script? It would be great full if you add the above command in the scripts and relase.

    also as my previous request, The result should be goes to email via HTML fomat or it can be same result as in the on screen but it shd be send the email to exchnage admin
    so that we can schdeule this script in task and runs daily in the morning ,and all our exchange admins get the result via Email , instead of running the script manually

    I hope you understood our request.

  25. Ramki

    Hi Paul

    Is there anyway to send the result in HTML formatl via Email as Health Check Report

  26. Robert

    Hi Paul,

    great job. Big thx for the script. When can we expect a test script for the other exchange roles 🙂

  27. Max

    Hello,
    Great script. Thanks a lot.

    Max.

  28. Oscar Pedroza

    Tks Paul…

  29. Oscar Pedroza

    Tks Paul, its a great job…

    One question do you have any script to check the performance of Exchange Server 2010 on and typically installation method.

    Best regards,

  30. Mark

    Thanks for the script. Looking forward for your next version. Sending an email alert to admin in the event of “RED” result would be nice.

  31. Tom G

    I figured it out. I had to include . in front of the command. Why?

  32. Tom G

    I don’t want to sound like a goober but when I try to run the script I get the following error:

    The term ‘Test-MailboxServer.ps1’ is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file……….

    What am I doing wrong?

  33. DavidDC

    First of all, thanks for the script. is great.

    when I try to export the script output to a file, it is empty. Do You know the reason?

    I use this command:
    C: Scripts>. Test-MailboxServer.ps1 | ConvertTo-Html | Set-Content C: Scripts Logs Test-MailboxServer.html

    Sorry if my question is a bit silly

    Thanks for everything

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Not silly, the script is a bit lazy and just uses Write-Host to output to console. It wasn’t originally written with nicely formatted reports in mind 🙂

      I’ll be updating it with proper PS objects and such so that HTML output is a possiblity, among other planned improvements.

      1. DavidDC

        Thanks for your time.
        I’m testing with the command Start-Transcript-path C: Scripts Logs Test-MailboxServer.csv at the beginning of the script and Stop-Transcript to end.

        It seems to work fine. Now I just send it by email.

        Thanks for everything.

  34. Pol

    Thanks for this great script, very useful indeed!
    Could you add:
    1. Test-OutlookConnectivity (Protocol:TCP and HTTP)
    2. Test-SmtpConnectivity
    3 .Test-replicationhealth
    4. Queue reporting (Get-TransportServer | Get-Queue)

    it will be the best choice for any Exchange admin since it is a perfect combination of functionality and beauty.
    Thanks again for your great work !

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Sure thing, I’m working on a script to health check all the server roles in the org.

  35. Mike Koch

    Hi Paul,

    Great script, but I found one small bug.

    On line 254:

    $IsDAG = Get-MailboxServer $server.name

    generates an error when a single server name is supplied as an argument on the command line, because it’s just a string instead of an exchange server object. When no argument is supplied, you do a Get-ExchangeServer to retrieve all of the servers, but when an argument is supplied, you’re not doing anything with it.

    Change line 56 from:

    $mbservers = @($server)

    to this:

    $mbservers = @(Get-Exchangeserver $server)

    and that will fix it right up.

    Thanks again,
    Mike

  36. Joe

    Great Script – ran perfectly. I think I’ll tweak it and add the email functionality.
    Once again another great article.

  37. Kbart2000

    Hi Paul,

    Works great, Thanks for sharing

  38. Dax

    Hi Paul,

    Good day to you! Just wondering if you have the new version to send the script thru email?

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Hi Dax, not yet. I’ve just returned from holidays this week though, and I’ve got a lot of improvements planned for the script including email functionality, so stay tuned 🙂

  39. Ram

    HI Paul

    Am running this script under my lab 2010 which is having 2 Mailbox Server and NO DAG is implemneted till..

    When i ran the script it from the C: drive in server name SRV1

    it showing as

    Checking SRV1

    Ping test:—–Checking SRV2

    Ping Test: [PS] C:\>

    What is the issue

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Are you running it in the Exchange Management Shell or just a Powershell session?

      1. Ram

        Hi Paul

        Am running this From Exchange Mgmt Shell.

      2. Avatar photo
        Paul Cunningham

        Hi Ram, sorry for the delay. I get that same problem if I try to run the script for a server that doesn’t exist. I guess that means the ping fails and the script is not handling that properly.

        So it could be that in your case the ping is failing too, perhaps due to a firewall? Can you ping the servers normally from the computer that you’re running the script on?

      3. Avatar photo
        Paul Cunningham

        Ram, I’ve updated the script to V1.1 with better handling of failed ping scenarios. Please try the new version and let me know how you go.

  40. Jagan

    Hi Paul,

    its working fine..I want to send this report as an email. Please let me know to proceed??

      1. Jagan

        Hello Paul, Thanks !!! I will try to write the script to send an email….

  41. Turbomcp

    Thanks
    Nice script

  42. Kevin

    Thanks Paul.

  43. Kevin

    Hi Paul,

    Test-Mailflow on this server gives me the error: Unable to open message store.

    This server does have a recovery database on it. Is that the cause of the error?

    Thanks,
    Kevin

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Yep that looks like the cause, I just need to update the script to deal with that scenario.

    2. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Hi Kevin, I’ve put some RDBs in my test lab and can’t seem to reproduce the error you’re getting. Could you please try downloading the new version of the script and trying again?

      Also, when you’re running the script are you running it on the server that only has an RDB on it, or do you see the error when you run the script on another server or on your own workstation?

      1. Kevin

        Hi Paul,

        I’ll download the latest build and try it later.

        Thanks,
        Kevin

  44. Chris Brown

    Hi Paul,

    Cool script, I’ll definitely be keeping it on hand.

    Just one quick note on using $nul as opposed to $null: $nul is settable like any other variable, $null is and always will be null.

    If someone has, for whatever reason, set $nul to a value, this could play havoc with some scripts.

    Cheers,

    Chris

  45. Kevin

    Hi Paul,

    I just remembered that there is one active database on that server. There are no copies of the database anywhere. This is the error message I get for that server.

    Kevin

    ERROR MSG:

    Mail flow test: [Microsoft.Mapi.MapiExceptionRecoveryMDBMismatch]: MapiExceptionRecoveryMDBMismatch: Unable to open message store. (hr=0x80004005, ec=1165)

    + CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (:) [Test-Mailflow], RecipientTaskException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DB35BF00,Microsoft.Exchange.Monitoring.TestMailFlow

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Is there a recovery database on that server as well?

      What happens if you just run Test-MailFlow for that server?

  46. Kevin

    Hi Paul,

    Great script. Thanks for sharing. It works great on all the mailbox servers in my DAG except for a server that I have that only holds passive database copies. On that server the mail flow test fails with an unable to open message store. Not a big deal, I was just wondering if you knew why.

    Thanks again.
    Kevin

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul Cunningham

      Makes sense if there are no active databases on that DAG member then it can’t perform that test. I’ll update the script to skip that test when there are no active DBs.

  47. Bandi

    Thanks. Changed it to unrestricted, ran the script, then changed back to remotesigned.

  48. Bandi

    Hi! I get the following error: The file xxxxxxx is not digitally signed. The script will not execute on the system.

    1. Rajesh Allaparthy

      Hi! I get the following error:

      VERBOSE: Connecting to Ex01.Welsoft.local
      VERBOSE: Connected to Ex01.Welsoft.local.
      The operation couldn’t be performed because object ‘DAG-01.Welsoft.local’ couldn’t be found on ‘DC01.welsoft.local’.
      + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Get-ExchangeServer], ManagementObjectNotFoundException
      + FullyQualifiedErrorId : 3D32AE05,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.Syste

      1. Avatar photo
        Paul Cunningham

        Which script are you running, and what is the exact command line you’re using?

        1. Rajesh Allaparthy

          Test-ExchangeServerHealth.ps1 V1.07, 24/11/2013

          .Test-ExchangeServerHealth.ps1 -ServerList serverlist.txt -ReportMode -SendEmail

        2. Avatar photo
          Paul Cunningham

          In your serverlist.txt have you included a DAG name? That won’t work. Only server names can go in that list.

        3. Rajesh Allaparthy

          But we have more than 30+ DAG’s available on our environment, in that we need to monitor only one DAG. Rest of the DAG’s we need to ignore it.

        4. Avatar photo
          Paul Cunningham

          You can ignore all the other DAGs by adding their names to the ignorelist.txt file.

        5. Rajesh Allaparthy

          Thanks.. Let me try..

        6. Rajesh Allaparthy

          I have added other servers(like ..EX08,EX09) and all other DAGs (like DAG-06, DAG-07 in Ignorelist.txt file. but still i got error.

          ************************************************************************************************************

          An Active Manager operation failed. Error An error occurred while attempting a cluster operation. Error: Cluster API ‘O
          penByNames(‘EX-08.Welsoft.local’, ‘EX-09.Welsoft.local’) failed for each server. Specific exceptions: ‘An
          Active Manager operation failed. Error An error occurred while attempting a cluster operation. Error: Cluster API ‘”Op
          enCluster(EX-09.Welsoft.local) failed with 0x6ba. Error: The RPC server is unavailable”‘ failed..’, ‘An Active M
          anager operation failed. Error An error occurred while attempting a cluster operation. Error: Cluster API ‘”OpenCluster
          (EX-08.Welsoft.local) failed with 0x6ba. Error: The RPC server is unavailable”‘ failed..’.’ failed..
          + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Get-DatabaseAvailabilityGroup], AmClusterApiException
          + FullyQualifiedErrorId : 9BBFD80B,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.GetDatabaseAvailabilityGroup.
          ***********************************************************************************************************

        7. Avatar photo
          Paul Cunningham

          Please run the script with the -Log switch and email me the log file that it produces. Address is paul (at) practical365.com

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