MessageStats 7.8 - Quick Start Guide

MessageStats Upgrade Guide for information about upgrading to a new release of MessageStats, or moving and upgrading the different MessageStats components.

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MessageStats Administrator Guide for MessageStats configuration using the MMC-based console and procedural information.

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MessageStats Reports User Guide for information about using the MessageStats Reports web-based interface and listings of the available reports

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MessageStats Deployment Guide for information about the product architecture and information useful in planning your deployment.

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Online Help for context sensitive help while you are using the MessageStats MMC console.

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Reports Online Help for help using the MessageStats Reports web-based interface.

Understanding MessageStats

MessageStats is a data collection and reporting application that facilitates the gathering and analysis of usage statistics for a number of messaging environments. The core MessageStats product focuses on Microsoft® Exchange messaging systems.

MessageStats collects and processes Exchange tracking logs and Exchange object usage information from selected Exchange organizations, administrative groups, routing groups, Exchange servers, or user-defined regions. A dynamic task-based gathering engine allows the collection of information to be intelligently scheduled, minimizing the impact to your messaging network.

MessageStats stores the information in a SQL database, which provides content for the web-based reports. MessageStats Reports provide comprehensive information including critical metrics for resource usage, capacity monitoring and planning, and migration preparedness. Reports also provide detailed information for monitoring mailbox content and mail flow, allowing you to track capacity and improper usage.

With the extensive information that MessageStats gathers, MessageStats provides an extremely flexible web-based reporting engine that allows all interested individuals to view messaging information and to package the information in many different ways. All reports are available by accessing the web site directly, by signing up for automated subscriptions that can be sent to any email address, or through export to a number of supported formats.

There are two primary groups of MessageStats users:

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System administrators who can configure servers, create regions, schedule automated/recurring gathering tasks, and import tracking log data.

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Report consumers or system administrators who use the collected data to create and view reports using the MessageStats web-based reports to analyze Exchange usage.

The following graphic illustrates the MessageStats workflow:

Figure 1. MessageStats workflow.

MessageStats is designed for large Exchange enterprises and seamlessly handles native Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013, Exchange 2016, and Exchange 2019 server versions, as well as mixed mode environments.

MessageStats provides an intelligent multi-threaded approach to ensure that you can copy and process large volumes of data quickly and reliably. MessageStats deployment requires no agents on your Exchange servers, intelligently minimizing network traffic on your production Exchange organization.

MessageStats provides the ability to scale out gatherings through the following functions:

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Scheduling. By scheduling activities to occur during off-periods, you can ensure that MessageStats Servers are not interrupted while doing time-critical gatherings. Thus MessageStats Servers would have the available resources to meet the gathering and processing requirements of the particular task.

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Distributing MessageStats Components. By installing the MessageStats database, MessageStats reports, and the MessageStats Server (including the console) on separate servers, you can balance resources. You can install one or more components on a single server, depending on the size and topology of your enterprise.

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Using additional task execution servers. Through the Create Task wizard, you can set tasks to execute on remote Task Execution Servers in any location. Task Execution Servers are servers on which the task processors are installed.

MessageStats Key Features

MessageStats provides the support for large Microsoft Exchange enterprise implementations through the following features:

Table 1. MessageStats key features.
Feature	Description
Auto-discovers Exchange environments	MessageStats analyzes your Exchange organization and auto-discovers the routing groups, administrative groups, and versions of your servers.
Supports multiple Exchange organizations	MessageStats allows you to view and report on multiple Exchange organizations simultaneously with your production environment. NOTE: In a scenario where multiple Exchange organizations overlay multiple domains, you may need a two-way trust between the domain in which MessageStats resides, and the domains on each Exchange organization to which MessageStats is associated. These trusts depend on the credentials that are used by the MessageStats gathering processes.
Handles diverse topologies	MessageStats seamlessly handles the details associated with tracking log file locations, database storage locations, and administrative group topologies. This allows you to report across native or mixed mode environments for Exchange 2010 and later. MessageStats also provides the ability to specify an alternate location for the Exchange databases, including alternative disk drives, SAN, and NAS devices.
Allows customized locations for archived tracking logs	MessageStats lets you specify file server share locations using UNC paths. This allows you to gather from archived tracking logs that no longer reside on the original Exchange servers that generated the logs. MessageStats also supports scenarios in which the tracking log directory has been moved from the default location on an Exchange server.
Supports layered security contexts	MessageStats allows you to specify security credentials that are used to gather data from each target server. As a result, MessageStats does not require you to maintain a single account that has rights across all of your Exchange servers. You can specify different credentials for tasks that gather data from different servers or groups.
Shows presence status in reports	In a report that displays mailbox-specific information, MessageStats can show the presence status information for the mailbox owner. In addition to presence status, the full set of Microsoft Office Communicator functionality is available directly from the MessageStats Reports.
Reports on hidden mailboxes and on distribution group membership	MessageStats can optionally report on hidden mailboxes and on distribution group membership on relevant reports. For information about setting the options to include this information in reports, see the MessageStats Administrator Guide.
Supports customized gathering schedules	MessageStats allows administrators to tune the number of times that mailbox, distribution group, and public folder data is gathered, to reduce network impact.
Provides for distributed data gatherers	You can install task processors at several locations to provide vertical and horizontal scaling.