Message Tracking Logs in Exchange 2007.

Message Tracking is a function of the Hub Transport role, which makes a lot of sense since that’s where all messages must go on their way to their destination, even if that destination is a mailbox on the same server and even mailbox store.

Message Tracking is enabled by default on Exchange 2007, which is nice, since everyone turns it on anyway. However, as with everything else on Exchange it’s all piled onto the C drive (or wherever you installed Exchange, obviously).

The default size for the directory is 250MB and it is located in c:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\TransportRoles\Logs\MessageTracking, which is, yet again, a bloody awful long way down if you were wandering around the server for them.

What you won’t see is the ability to bugger about with the settings so, in my quest to appear actually competent with MONAD (let’s not muck about with the daft new name for now) I present a little list of what you can do with the settings.

You can move the logs:
Set-TransportServer SERVERNAME –MessageTrackingLogPath LOCALFILEPATH (can’t be a UNC)

You can set the individual file size:

Set-TransportServer SERVERNAME -MessageTrackingLogMaxFileSize NNZZ

Where “NN” is a number and “ZZ” is either B, KB, MB, GB or TB. I won’t insult you with telling you what the letters mean.

Alternatively you can set the maximum size of the MT log directory:

Set-TransportServer SERVERNAME –MessageTrackingLogMaxDirectorySize NNZZ

Again, where “NN” is a number and “ZZ” is either B, KB, MB, GB or TB
The default age for these tracking logs is 30 days but you can of course ramp this up. Storage is cheap so knock yourself out:

Set-TransportServer Exchange01 -MessageTrackingLogMaxAge DD.HH:MM:SS

Yes, the D, H, M and S do stand for what you think they stand for. Obviously you’re only going to be changing the DD number, unless you’re doing something wacky.
And finally there is the issue of Subject Logging. A simple tickbox in Exchange 2003 is replaced by this little string:

Set-TransportServer SERVERNAME -MessageTrackingLogSubjectLoggingEnabled $true
Set-TransportServer SERVERNAME -MessageTrackingLogSubjectLoggingEnabled $false

I assume you can all be trusted to work out what turns it on and what turns it off.

Carry on.