Does anybody know how to configure Nagios to monitor MS Exchange mail stores?
We have had mailstores unmount (because of diskspace, and other causes), and would like to monitor their state (mounted or not) via nagios.
We use pNSClient.exe on our windows servers, which can monitor processes and services – but apparently Exchange simply uses one process (store.exe) for all mail stores – and so monitoring store.exe will not be helpful.
Best Answer
As you stated, because Exchange uses the store.exe process for all mailbox databases, it is not possible to monitor individual mailbox database that way. There may be ways to do so by talking directley to Exchange, but I don't know of any process for Nagios that can do that.
The store.exe process is the Exchange Information Store service, this can be monitored by Nagios. If the mailbox databases dismounts because of diskspace issues, and many other issues it is likely this server will have stopped as well. Monitoring this should give you a good indication of mailbox issues
This article is an excellent tutorial on setting up monitoring for Exchange services and includes a lot of info on the different things you can check to monitor your Exchange servers health.
[Edit]
Windows Performance Counters does have a counter for the Exchange store, the MSExchangeIS Mailbox, counter so this may also be able to be used.