Troubleshooting Monitoring and Alerts Issues

The monitoring functions in SBS are normally a set-and-forget kind of service. It might take you a couple of iterations before you can correctly adjust some of the thresholds, but after you find the correct settings you probably won't even have to look at the monitoring settings again. Although there are not many issues related to monitoring the most common ones are presented here.

Reconfiguring and Reinstalling Monitoring and Alerts

If you are having an issue with monitoring or the alerts your first troubleshooting step should be to run the Configure Monitoring Wizard to reset everything back to the default settings. Follow these steps:

1.	Open the Server Management Console. On the left pane expand Standard Management, click on Monitoring and Reporting, and select Set Up Monitoring and Reports.
2.	On the welcome screen click Next. Select Modify Existing Settings and continue the wizard selecting the options you want.

If the problem is more serious and the preceding steps did not fix it, you might want to reinstall the monitoring features. Follow these steps:

1.	Open the Server Management Console. On the left pane expand Standard Management, click on Monitoring and Reporting, and select Set Up Monitoring and Reports.
2.	On the welcome screen click Next. Select Reinstall Monitoring Features, click Next, and accept the warning issued. Finish the wizard by selecting the options you want.

Incorrect Name on the Reports

One common problem with reports on SBS 2003 Service Pack 1 is that the sender name and titles of performance and usage reports include the server name instead of the organization name. This is usually not a problem if you manage only one server, but if you receive a dozen of these reports with the same name it can become confusing.

To fix this issue you need to modify the registry. As usual, be very careful when editing the registry and always export the key you will be working on. Follow these steps:

1.	Click on Start. Click Run and type Regedit on the Open box.
2.	On the registry editor, drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer.
3.	Double-click on RegisteredOrganization and enter the name of your organization on the value field. Click OK and close the registry editor.

The next time the report is sent it should have the name of the organization instead of the server name.

IIS Errors When You Try to Access the Intranet Monitoring Pages

Sometimes when you try to access any monitoring page with a web browser you might get an error such as "The Page Cannot be Found" or "Bad Request." This error can occur if the default website in IIS has been assigned a host header value (by default it should be blank). Other causes include problems with the loopback address in IIS if you are using ISA.

To fix this problem you have to remove the host header value from the IIS default website and/or assign the loopback address (127.0.0.1) to it. More details about this error can be found in Microsoft KB article 842693 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/842693).