Dear JDisc Friends,

as you might know, we are working closely together with our partner SHI on features primarily targeted to the software license management area. SHI is offering software license management services and helps customers to optimize their license cost.

Only with the great support from SHI engineers, we were able to improve the SQL Server and Microsoft Office discovery (including editions and product keys). The next step is to get details about enterprise applications such as Microsoft Exchange, Lync, and Sharepoint.

We started with Microsoft Exchange and starting with build 3315, JDisc Discovery is able to gather detailed information about the Microsoft Exchange installation including the list of all mailboxes. We collect basic configuration information such as the OWA or active sync configuration. Additionally, we link mailboxes to their corresponding users within the Active Directory. Finally, we also gather mailbox size and quota information.

Microsoft uses its powershell extensively in order to manage their software installations. And the Microsoft Exchange discovery feature was a great opportunity for us to improve JDisc Discovery’s powershell support. Starting with this release, we not only rely on WMI information, but also run powershell scripts to gather data that is often not available with WMI.

The Microsoft Exchange discovery is enabled by default. A new configuration tab within the data collection area lets users enable or disable the mailbox discovery. A new timeout value for Exchange powershell scripts overwrites the default remote login timeout. The new setting is necessary, because the powershell data collection scripts may run a significant time on larger installations.

Microsoft Exchange Discovery Configuration

When JDisc Discovery scans a Microsoft Exchange server, then it determines the edition and the list of all mailboxes within the farm. The software menu has been extended by two new menu items:

• Microsoft Exchange Server
  This menu item lists all Exchange server together with mailbox statistics and Exchange server edition.
• Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes
  This menu item lists all Exchange mailboxes together with configuration and quote information.

Microsoft Exchange Reports Menu

The Microsoft Exchange Server menu item lists all Exchange servers together with mailbox statistics.

Microsoft Exchange Servers

The Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes report finally lists all available mailboxes. For each mailbox, we gather information such as the exchange server, the settings for web access and active sync as well as quote information.

Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes

We hope that you like our new feature and you can expect more Microsoft software discovery technologies in the coming months…

And as usual: Open our download page and check out this new feature!

Cheers,
Thomas