Monitoring Exchange Server 2007 Performance: Perfmon counters and thresholds

Monitoring mission-critical services such as email is a necessity in most organizations. Whereas monitoring software like Microsoft SCOM can use Exchange monitoring expertise and rules encoded in Management Packs, and many third-party monitoring solutions ship with some embedded knowledge, if you're setting up a monitoring system or creating a home-grown app to do so, you need to know what to monitor.

I was fortunate enough to (sort of) take a course on Exchange performance monitoring at my previous employer, and get a lot of input on the subject from some great minds in the business. The resulting fondness for performance monitoring and performance counters is probably understandable.

If you share my enthusiasm for performance monitoring, here's some documentation and guidance you may find very useful:

- Monitoring Common Counters
- Monitoring Mailbox Servers
- Monitoring Hub Transport Servers
- Monitoring Client Access Servers
- Monitoring Unified Messaging Servers with System Center Operations Manager