Exchange Server EKG

PROMODAG Reports 7.0
PROMODAG Reports, which Figure 4 shows, is a mature Exchange-reporting solution with a set of highly customizable reports. Although it has no security model to let non-administrative users produce reports themselves, it can automate delivery of reports to such users.

PROMODAG Reports works in a similar manner to bv-Control for Exchange: It imports Exchange message-tracking logs (along with other data such as directory, mailbox size, and store size). Some data is imported on a schedule, other data is collected when you run a report. PROMODAG stores data in a Microsoft Access or SQL Server database.

The tool uses a standard Windows GUI rather than a Web-based UI or MMC snap-in. Administrators can share the database from multiple consoles, but PROMODAG has no ability to limit which reports users see, so all users need elevated access to Exchange (such as access to all mailboxes) to run many of its reports. This makes PROMODAG a tool for administrators only. You can schedule reports for delivery to non-administrative users, but those users can't customize reports for themselves or set up report delivery without administrator intervention.

PROMODAG doesn't give you quite the level of access to detail that bv-Control for Exchange does, but PROMODAG alone let me report OWA usage and was one of only two tools (e-nspect2000 being the other) that let me run reports according to attachment type. PROMODAG also had the richest chargeback reporting: It can calculate chargebacks according to megabytes of messages sent, received, or stored and can calculate different rates for messages to and from Exchange, Internet Mail, CC:Mail, X.400, and other messaging systems. If you don't need multiple-user access, I recommend PROMODAG. The tool's extensive list of parameterized reports is easy to find and use, it can report more extensive data than MessageStats can, and it's much easier to use than bv-Control.

Quest MessageStats 5.6
MessageStats, which Figure 5 shows, can provide valuable email data to administrators and end users alike. The tool's prebuilt reports are intuitive to generate, quick to load, and easy to read. MessageStats had a good selection of reports. One notable omission was attachment reporting; neither can it report the current day's data. Still, it was my favorite tool overall.

MessageStats gets most of its data from Exchange message-tracking logs and collects data on a schedule that you specify. All reports are generated from data stored in a Microsoft SQL Server (or MSDE) database, as opposed to queries against your live Exchange servers, keeping the tool's impact on Exchange to a bare minimum. This fact might provide important peace of mind for administrators of busy Exchange servers, but my Exchange server's processor utilization didn't spike much with either bv-Control's or PROMODAG's MAPI-based reports, so don't let this point be your only criteria. Other tools' MAPI-based reporting did have a noticeable effect on my reporting server, however. Not only does MessageStats avoid contacting the Exchange server, it processes message-tracking logs as they are imported rather than when you run a report. These two factors made generating reports noticeably faster than with the other tools.

MessageStats' Web-based UI uses IIS's integrated Windows authentication for security, so you can grant access to any domain user. By default, all users have access to the predefined reports and can save customized versions of reports for themselves or schedule such reports for regular delivery. You can further control users' access to individual reports by adding user accounts to the local security group and by setting file-system permissions on the Web server. This security scheme was sufficient to lock a test user out of reports I considered sensitive, making MessageStats an excellent choice if you want to let users create and run their own reports rather than doing so on their behalf.

The product provides a substantial number of predefined reports. The biggest area of deficiency was attachment reporting. You can't, for example, find all the .mp3 files that users store in Exchange mailboxes. (Quest representatives informed me that the next major release will include such reports.) MessageStats supports chargeback reporting on both storage use and volume (in megabytes) of messages sent and can summarize data across multiple Exchange organizations. (PROMODAG and e-nspect2000 can report across multiple Exchange organizations as well, but the data in those products' reports isn't as consolidated as it is in MessageStats' reports.)

For those concerned with compliance, MessageStats can search for messages that contain specific keywords in the subject or that have been sent to specific external domains. However, you have to specify the keywords and domains you want to search for before importing the logs. You can get around this limitation by reimporting logs, but this auditing capability isn't quite as useful as the message-searching capability in bv-Control for Exchange or PROMODAG.