Change Auditor 7.3 - Release Notes

Outlook “Show New Mail Desktop Alert” triggers the “Message Read by Owner” event: When this option is enabled, new email that arrives flashes a semi-transparent “alert” near the desktop system tray. Change Auditor captures a Message Read by Owner event when this occurs. The new email alert window opens each new email message as it arrives to build the alert. Note: The “Message Read by Owner” event is disabled by default in Audit Event configuration.

Microsoft Outlook/Exchange add-Ins: Change Auditor may be incompatible with Microsoft Outlook or Exchange “add-ins” (commercial or custom) that interact with Exchange Servers. While Quest makes every effort to ensure proper functionality and performance, we are unable to validate against the many add-ins available for Microsoft Outlook or Exchange Server.

“By Owner” auditing feature: Selecting ‘By Owner’ auditing for many mailboxes can produce many events. This adversely affects Change Auditor auditing and in severe cases the performance of the Exchange Server itself. In extreme cases, Outlook connections may be slowed or dropped. Select owner auditing for at most only a few critical mailboxes.

Auditing mailboxes with many delegates: Auditing normal mailboxes where access permission is granted to many delegates (more than 10), can produce large numbers of non-owner events. This will adversely affect Change Auditor auditing and in severe cases, the performance of the Exchange Server itself. If these mailboxes need to be audited, add them to the Shared Mailbox list (User Defined tab) to reduce unwanted non-owner events and to improve performance.

SMTP alert notifications on owner mailbox “event storm”: It is highly recommended that mailboxes configured to receive SMTP alerts are excluded from auditing “by Owner” events. An “event storm” could occur when a new SMTP alert is received on an audited mailbox by owner, generating a never-ending cycle of “Inbox opened by owner” and “Message read by owner” events.

Upgrading agents on high volume Exchange Servers: It is critical that agent upgrades be scheduled for maintenance intervals or other periods of low user mailbox activity for any configuration of Exchange Server. Change Auditor for Exchange agent upgrades should not be attempted on an active Exchange Server cluster node in any case.

Attempting to upgrade the agent on a busy Exchange Server may result in:

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Exchange 2013 mailbox role: failed agent upgrade, unwanted RpcClientAccess service restart, or unscheduled Exchange cluster node failover.

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Exchange 2013 client access role: unwanted IIS Exchange application pool restarts.

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Exchange 2016 or 2019 mailbox role: failed agent upgrade, unwanted RpcClientAccess or IIS application pool restarts, or unscheduled Exchange cluster node failover.

To eliminate the possibility of unscheduled Exchange Server downtime, perform agent upgrades to Exchange Servers during periods of low or no mailbox activity.

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General EMC concepts:

Control Stations: The Control Station is a dedicated management computer that monitors and controls cabinet components and allows access to the full functionality of the Celerra or VNX Network Server software. It contains utilities for installing and configuring the Celerra or VNX Network Server, maintaining the system, and monitoring system performance. The Control Station runs a set of programs that are collectively referred to as the Control Station software. The Control Station itself uses an EMC-customized version of Linux as its operating system.

Data Movers: Data Movers are the Celerra or VNX components that transfer data between the storage system and the network client. Data Movers are managed by using a Control Station. By default, Data Movers are named server_n, where n is the slot number of the Data Mover. For example, server_2 is the Data Mover in slot 2.

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Troubleshooting EMC events: If EMC events are not being audited by the Change Auditor agent, first check to see if the EMC CAVA agent service is running on your Windows Server where the EMC events are being collected. Second, check to see if the CEPP service on the EMC Data Mover is running or if the state is offline, by using the command:

server_cepp {mover_name} -p -i

Resulting output of this command should be similar to the following:

IP = {mover IP}, state = ONLINE... etc

If the CEPP service is OFFLINE, you can fix this by first restarting the EMC CAVA service on the Windows Server. If that does not work, restart the EMC CEPP services on the Data Mover by using the following command:

server_cepp {mover_name} -service -start

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Change Auditor agent requires File and Printer Sharing on Windows Server 2012: By default, File and Printer sharing are not enabled on Windows Server 2012 installations. To remotely install agents to Windows Server 2012 (Full UI and Server Core), enable the File and Printer Sharing (SMB-in) Inbound rule in the Windows Firewall (Port 445) on the target host machine.

The File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks service on the network adapter is also required to be enabled for remote deployment.

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File System auditing for NAS and mapped network drives: Change Auditor does not support File System auditing on NAS devices or mapped network drives other than EMC Celerra/VNX/Isilon or NetApp Data ONTAP filers.

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Microsoft Office files: Since the Change Auditor for Windows File Servers, NetApp, and EMC drivers capture events related to file activity, it is possible that a folder containing files being opened and edited by Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so on) will generate unexpected results. Understanding how MS Office products interact with the file system might help explain some of the audit events captured. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/211632 for more details.

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File System Auditing for SAN: Support and engineering will attempt to troubleshoot and resolve issues to the best of their ability when the SAN is attached to a Windows-based file server such that it appears as a local drive on that host. In this configuration, the SAN generally behaves as an extra disk drive on the server which can be audited by a Change Auditor agent on that server. Success in this configuration depends on many factors and is not guaranteed.

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File System auditing: Change Auditor does not audit files with a size of zero (0) bytes.

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Recompiling the Change Auditor MOF file: Change Auditor no longer ships with a MOF file as part of the coordinator installer. Should the CA WMI namespace become corrupt, or should there be an installation failure, the file can be recompiled using the following command line:

ChangeAuditor.Service.exe --install

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Blackberry Enterprise Server (or similar) services: To eliminate auditing of automated tasks, the Change Auditor agent attempts to automatically exclude auditing of mailbox accesses by Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) or similar service accounts. These accounts have both ‘Receive All’ and ‘Administer Information Setup’ rights on the mailbox database. If these explicit rights are granted to user accounts, those accounts are also excluded from mailbox auditing, which may not be wanted. If necessary, this automated exclusion can be disabled on a server-by-server basis.

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Changes to domain administration level security objects may generate subsequent DACL changes reported with Changed By information as “NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON” up to an hour after the original change. According to Microsoft, an Active Directory domain controller that holds the primary domain controller (PDC) operations master role runs a thread every hour to check the access control lists of members of several built-in administrative groups. If a user account is a member of one of these administrative groups, even if only because of its membership with a distribution group, the user account's ACL is checked when the thread is run and may be reset to the ACL of the CN=AdminSDHolder,CN=System,DC=<domain> object.

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Exclude Change Auditor components and monitored processes from antivirus software: Quest recommends excluding the following Change Auditor components and monitored processes from any antivirus software that uses technology similar to “Buffer Overrun Protection” or “On Access Scanner”:

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DSAMain.exe

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Lsass.EXE

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Microsoft.Exchange.RpcClientAccess.Service.exe (Exchange 2013 only)

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NPSRVhost.exe

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Services.exe

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‘Server’ service