2.9 Metrics and reporting

Effective management of the Exchange environment requires disciplined monitoring and reporting. Metrics are the standards by which the quality of service is measured. Reporting includes the generation, distribution, and review of the measurement data to the appropriate audience. Depending on the type of report, reports may be used to summarize the measurement data, to illustrate trends, to correlate multiple metrics, or to compare measurements to past or desirable values.

Measurement of service quality is a key component in most of the processes involved in the administration of any professionally managed messaging implementation. Metrics and reporting can help the operations group and the user community understand the current performance of the e-mail environment and how it is being used. Metrics can identify system performance trends and changes in usage patterns. They are the primary way to validate that the e-mail system is providing the level of service specified in SLAs. After changes have been made to key system components, metrics can validate that the system continues to perform as expected. Changes in key metrics can help determine when upgrades are needed to key components, such as the number of processors, CPU speed, memory, disk space, and network bandwidth. Operations reports generally fall into one of the categories described in the following sections. Later chapters of this book will help to explain where to collect the information for these types of reports.