Product Reviews

Comprehensively Documenting Exchange

Ecora Config Auditor for Exchange provides details of your Exchange configuration, and changes thereto.


What problems lurk under the covers of your Exchange installation? If you don't know, Ecora can find out for you. While not really an administration tool, Ecora Configuration Auditor 2.0 for Exchange provides for the generation of intelligent reports on your Exchange configuration. In one spot you get a complete rundown of what you will find in Exchange System Manager plus information from Active Directory.

Product Information

Ecora Config Auditor for Exchange 2.0
Ecora Software
Portsmouth, NH
603-436-1616
877-923-2672
http://www.ecora.com

For more Exchange tools, see "Keeping Exchange Running" in the May 2002 issue.

Installation of this product is easy probably because of the elegance in its simplicity of design and implementation. A reporting tool (which is what I call it despite Ecora's insistence that it does much more than that) does not need a lot of resources—maybe a database to store report data, information on which reports are defined, and storage space for the reports themselves. The only other piece that you will need is a license from Ecora to unlock the features of Config Auditor that you want to use.

Running this program, I started by connecting to both of the Exchange 5.5 servers in an organization, as well as an Exchange 2000 server. Ecora will generate a current configuration report of all user accounts, distribution lists/groups, and public folders, and other objects defined in your Exchange organization. The report will include information from the directory as well as items such as storage space used, connector configuration, and the like. After generating the report you can view it from the Ecora user interface or directly from a web browser. The browser-based interface can be invoked from the MMC administration console for Config Auditor and allows for easy navigation of report data in either the detailed long form or more succinct short form.

Ecora

Ecora Config Auditor's browser interface allows for easy navigation of configuration report information generated. (Click image to view larger version.)

While being able to generate a full report of your Exchange configuration any time you want is a nice feature, being able to also schedule the regular generation of change reports, or to define a baseline configuration and generate a baseline report against which to compare configurations is the real power of Config Auditor. While this is still largely a reporting function, the smarts introduced by Ecora in generating these reports make the product worthwhile for administrators and consultants alike. If you are a consultant, this tool can save many headaches trying to resolve a client problem that they swore was there before you left—now you can see that they may have changed something.

About the Author

Damir Bersinic, MCSE, MCDBA, MCSA, MCT, is an independent consultant, trainer and author.

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