General Administration

This bit of the health check is really done for me.  ExBPA was released nearly 3 years ago and is a really fantastic tool for gauging where the administration and configuration of your servers does not follow Microsoft's best practises.  My only real advice here is to use it and follow the advice that the tool gives.  All Exchange administrators should be running ExBPA on a routine basis.

I prefer to view the data using 'Tree Reports\Summary View'. From here you can drill down through all of the data gathered by the tool and can also view the issues according to the logical structure of the containers.

I would recommend creating a new user account with the required access to run the tool. The account can be disabled whenever the tool is not being used. The access that is required is as follows:

• Administrators group membership on the local machine - from where ExBPA is run
• Administrators group membership on all Exchange servers
• Server Operators group membership in forest root domain and all domains containing Exchange servers
• Exchange View Only Administrator permissions in Exchange organization

Download and install ExBPA to your local workstation and run it at least once a month against the entire organisation. ExBPA is updated regularly and so each time you run the tool the configuration information will be updated directly from the Internet. If you do not have a connection to the Internet you can manually download the configuration data manually before running the tool.

To just to reaffirm - run ExBPA regularly and don't be afraid to act on the recommendations that the tool makes.

1. Compile a list of the issues that ExBPA highlights.
2. Go through the article associated with each issue & make sure you understand what the recommendation is and why it's made.
3. Review the entire list with your team and remove any issue from the list that do not believe is relevant to your company or particular configuration.
4. Prioritize each issue.
5. Submit each change via your change control policy and update your servers configurations as per the ExBPA recommendations.

..'Run your own Exchange Server Health Check....  Part 3 - Security' to follow soon...