Microsoft Exchange Server is a popular solution to all your email problems. It is the most widely used email server in the world. Emails are an integral part of any company or organization, for it represents the way of professional & confidential communication between two parties.
It is essential to monitor and maintain this infrastructure. It’s not just about keeping track of emails anymore, and there are multiple factors associated with keeping the process stable and efficient.
Usually, it’s set up on a cloud platform that runs on Windows operating systems. For an Exchange Monitoring Software to be complete, it needs to have a plethora of features. It needs to have automated tracking and prevention of a potential maintenance glitch that might later come out as a threat if not given any attention.
They also monitor hardware changes, such as operating temperature and supply voltage. On a software level, it must provide details on processor load, hard disk capacity, and disk utilization.
Exchange Server Monitoring Software and Tools let you keep track of everything, right from server health, security, and maintenance. The main goal here is to make sure that the exchange server stays live and functional all the time, and if something comes up, then you must know about it in advance. In this segment, we talk about the Best Exchange Server Monitoring Software and Tools for 2019.
Best Exchange Server Monitoring Software and Tools for 2019
We have nominated a few of the best possible exchange server monitoring solutions out there. They were selected on the basis of essential features that are a must for a monitoring tool. One good reason to use these exchange monitoring tools is to have reliable feedback on the server’s performance and not make any assumptions without any significant metrics.
1. Solarwinds Server and Application Monitor
Solarwinds Server and Application Monitor come with powerful integrations to keep a tap on Exchange Server. It’s quite an exciting solution for admins as it can map out all the requirements while you plan to set up your server.
Further, it can help you monitor the server’s health, processes, and applications running on it. Additionally, with Solarwinds, it is quite an easy job to scale from a small network to the ones comprising thousands of servers. You can also monitor cloud-hosted services with this monitoring tool.
Setup of Solarwinds Server and Application Monitor for Exchange Server is quite easy as it comes with an auto-discovery tool to identify, configure, and sync according to your existing server configs.
It comes with quite an intuitive user interface that displays all the server stats in a graphical or tabular manner. You can see the real-time as well as historical performance and any alerts related to server health. It is made for troubleshooting any element before it becomes a pain in the server.
The friendly-looking user interface will give you all sorts of updates on the internal gossip that the server does while you’re away. Here’s how – It will show you how the mailbox is piling up and using the storage, how much efficiently it is functioning, and what upgrades do you need right now to maintain the same functionality in the near future.
It also does this by analyzing real-time and historical data and predicts the future outcome and actions which you are supposed to take to ensure smooth functioning. You can get a free 30 days trial to find out if the Solarwinds Server and Application Monitor tool suits your requirements and reduces the workload of IT admins.
2. Foglight for Exchange
Foglight for Exchange is quite a robust tool that is specifically designed as a solution to monitor Exchange Servers. It can help you recognize physical hardware-related, virtual- software related, or any cloud-related problems and offer assistance in solving them.
It comes with an intuitive dashboard that gives overall performance monitoring in a single glance. You can see critical load areas with abnormal data flow and quickly take steps to fix it.
It also discovers virtual components for exchange and identifies and fixes the issues on the virtual level alone. Users also get a powerful Office 365 integration with Foglight for exchange, and it helps you keep track of emails more efficiently.
Furthermore, you get a detailed report on incident predictions, deviations, and operational problems so that it can be resolved if necessary. It’s quite newbie-friendly as it answers all your questions right away with builtin FAQ’s in a detailed way right on your dashboard.
The report building tool is also available to get quick insights and ad hoc and scheduled reports on server performance. Additionally, you can give specific access to staff that deals with server management and maintenance. Foglight for Exchange comes with a 30 days free trial.
It’s effortless setup, and Exchange centric design makes it a perfect choice for Exchange server monitoring. Do note that- there is no pricing model, you need to contact their sales team and get a suitable quote that matches your usage.
3. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor for Exchange
The Paessler PRTG Network Monitor is designed in such a way that it can monitor your complete IT infrastructure. Admins can set this tool in minutes with its built-in auto-discovery agent. It has specific features dedicated to Exchange servers.
Everything is almost pre-configured while you set up this tool. It creates a variety of sensors for you from the start to hit the ground running. It also comes with an option to add additional sensors to keep an eye on potential areas related to hardware or software glitches.
You get protection from Exchange Delays, Malfunctions, and Data Losses with a varied set of monitoring sensors (here sensors is a term that is used to signify an element of the Exchange Server).
It keeps a tap on mailbox size and login attempts to identify storage-related issues and maintain a security log. The database sensor makes sure that your Exchange Database is mounted and validated all the time. You also get to know if the server backups are happening timely or not. It also shows you the number of emails that are currently in the queue.
It efficiently overlooks the email delivery process by monitoring the response time of SMTP and IMAP servers. End to End Delivery of emails is ensured by ensuring the functionality of all the email protocols such as POP3, IMAP, and SMTP. Server admins can set alarms for any functionality losses that may occur to prevent any potential hazard.
PRTG Network Monitor for Exchange comes with an entirely free feature-rich version, which is limited to 100 sensors. You can monitor 100 elements free for a lifetime. If you want to monitor more aspects than a license must be purchased.
4. ManageEngine OpManager
ManageEngine OpManager is an all in one monitoring tool. It also comes with Exchange specific monitoring for IT admins to relax. Like all other tools, this one comes with auto-discovery, as well. Thus making it free of any setup hassle.
It can monitor over 60 different parameters that are specific to Exchange servers. Furthermore, you can install it on Windows or Linux powered operating systems. Additionally, you can monitor the servers from anywhere with its monitoring app made available for smartphones.
You get access to multiple reporting templates, which can be further customized as per your requirements. After you get started with this tool, you see a dashboard that conveys data in the form of metrics.
They alert you for any abnormal behavior which occurs internally and helps you troubleshoot the problem in no time. The main aim here is to optimize your server for performance, and this tool makes it simpler to do so.
It checks for any inactive mailbox and discards it to free resources. It even goes to the lengths of checking the database capacity and tries to channel the storage and maintain everything in acceptable limits.
Furthermore, you can also troubleshoot outlook connectivity issues by checking response time and other related parameters and fix them if anything comes up. It also keeps track of rejected scan requests, blocked recipients, etc. You can get a small business or enterprise solution as per your current requirements.
5. Netwrix Auditor for Exchange
Netwrix Auditor for Exchange is a complete solution to all your server problems. It’s made in such a way that it tracks every bit of activity that follows via emails in any organization, and on the top of it, everything is automated.
You can deploy it on the on-premise Windows Server or on Virtual machines such as Windows Hyper-V and VMware. Its principal focus is on security and server health. It comes with a very attractive and user-friendly dashboard. You can see all the critical elements in a single glance.
It throws out alerts for any suspicious activities such as modification of any transport rules, database, and permission changes of any Exchange mailbox. They also give a comprehensive report to back the claims on any activity.
Its Behaviour Anomalies gives you a risk score of every profile. You can further look into any user activity and investigate further. Risk Assesment will provide you with an overview of user accounts and data access permissions. It also gives an option to provide restricted access to the dashboard to anyone else for quick troubleshooting.
Enterprise Overview will tell you all about the active users and the changes done by them in the past couple of days. Furthermore, it also has blind spot analysis to identify activity out of business hours to maintain the integrity of the organization.
It will also point out suspicious files and report user identity theft if ever occurred. You can also generate reports based on regulatory compliance standards such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX, and GDPR. It comes with two different editions that help you monitor your Exchange server.
One is Data Discovery & Classification that helps you classify the data, and the other one is Auditing & Compliance Reporting, which enables you to audit your Exchange server for data access. You can also grab a free trial for 20 days or launch their web demo, which doesn’t require any installation.
Conclusion
Admins will have a new companion to monitor all the internal nuisance happening while the emails are thrown left and right. Take control over your server by following the important elements and always be sure of everything. Do let us know about which Exchange Server Monitoring Software and Tools for 2019 met your requirements in the comment sections below.