Earlier this year, Microsoft released an update to yet another tool designed to help the Exchange administrator maintain a fully functioning and reliable Exchange organization. The Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant (ExTRA) v1.1 complements the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer (ExBPA) to provide extensive information on an Exchange installation.

ExTRA installs on Windows with the Microsoft.Net Framework 1.1 already present, including Exchange 2000 or 2003, though Microsoft does recommend keeping the analyzers separate from Exchange mailbox servers. On an Exchange 2007 server with the management components installed, the ExTRA functionality is incorporated into the management interface in the Toolbox section so installation is refused with the Exchange 2007 management console present.

ExTRA is more like a suite of analysis tools covering a variety of potential Exchange problem areas. As witnessed in Figure 1, ExTRA includes troubleshooters for performance, mail flow, database, and Exchange processes. Depending on the symptom, ExTRA can use a variety of sources and method for its analysis, including reading Active Directory Exchange configuration information, leveraging Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and retrieving information from logs like Message Tracking and Application Event logs. 

Figure 1

Performance Troubleshooter
The focus of performance analysis with this tool is client access. This is used when clients are experiencing connectivity issues, including the popup explaining that Outlook is retrieving data from Exchange. RPC connectivity is analyzed and recommended resolutions are presented based on the symptom selected for analysis, namely RPC performance problems for one or more Outlook clients. Reports from the troubleshooter can be exported to HTML, CSV, or XML for reporting or archiving.

Mail Flow Troubleshooter
There are several symptoms that ExTRA can focus on for mail flow analysis, including a couple specific to Exchange 2007. This tool can check queues and report on mail flow internal to the exchange organization as well as items arriving or leaving the Exchange org. These symptoms as taken from the Mail Flow Troubleshooter itself:

• Users are complaining about receiving non-delivery reports when they send messages.
• Messages coming from external senders over the Internet are delayed or are not received by some recipients.
• Messages that are destined for external recipients on the Internet are delayed or are not sent to some recipients.
• Messages are backing up in one or more queues on a server
• Users are reporting that messages are backing up in their Outbox (for Exchange Server 2007 only).
• Problems with Edge Server synchronization with Active Directory (for Exchange Server 2007 only).

This tool will provide a summary of the Exchange environment based on the Exchange server and global catalog server chosen for the scan, then report on the selected symptom from the list.

Database Troubleshooter
The database troubleshooter can retrieve database related events from the event logs of specific Exchange servers. This will summarize database issues as reported to the log, such as database mounting issues.

Exchange processes are failing
This tool can scan an Exchange server (or pulls the Exchange topology from Active Directory for the administrator to select servers to scan) and report on failure events. This provides a centralized means of viewing problems for all Exchange servers in an organization.

Overall, ExTRA complements ExBPA and together they provide an impressive analysis, troubleshooting and reporting toolset. They share the interface in the Toolbox section of the Exchange 2007 management components and both are available as separate downloads as well. Output reports have preset filtering categories allowing administrators to focus on "critical issues" or review a "summary" page.

For more information, see Microsoft Exchange Analyzers
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb288481.aspx