Thanks for choosing Mailscape for your Exchange monitoring and reporting needs! Our award-winning products will give you better visibility into your servers, users, and workloads, but to do that there are some prerequisites and system requirements that we want to make you aware of before beginning your installation. This document outlines the system requirements for Mailscape only.  If you are intending to install additional features like Mailscape 365, Compass, Uniscope, and Foresite, then please review the ENow Management System (EMS) Prerequisites document. 


Basic architecture 

Mailscape is a feature of the ENow Management System (EMS) and it consists of several components that must be set up or installed during the installation process: 

  • The EMS web server is the central collection point for data and provides the monitoring and reporting interface for administrators. 

  • Individual servers being monitored will run workload-specific clients. For example, there are separate clients for Mailscape that run on all of the Exchange servers to report data back to the EMS web server. 

  • All EMS monitoring and reporting data is stored locally in a proprietary database.  When SQL integration is enabled for reporting flexibility, additional data is stored in a SQL server database.  This SQL database can be located on the same computer as the EMS web server role, but when Mailscape is enabled as a feature we recommend a dedicated SQL Server instance on another computer.  In organizations that have separate database management teams responsible for database administration, ENow’s software supports the use of an existing SQL Server instance as long as permissions, CPU, and memory are assigned appropriately. 


Active Directory requirements 

  • The EMS web server should be in the same Active Directory Forest as the on premise servers (Mailscape requires that the EMS web server be in the same domain) it is monitoring.  The only exception to this requirement are servers monitored that are located in a DMZ or EDGE network. 

  • Our security model requires that 2 Active Directory security groups be created and named exactly "Mailscape_Admins" and "Mailscape_Users". If the user account used to install EMS is a member of the Domain Admins security group, these groups will be automatically created. If you create them manually, please plan to enter the URL http://actualwebservername:20080/Mailscapeweb in the “Notes” attribute of the "Mailscape_Admins" security group. 


Network requirements 

  • TCP port 20080 must be open in both directions between the EMS web server and each client machine. 

  • TCP 1433 must be open between the SQL Server computer hosting the EMS database instance and the EMS web server. 

  • The monitoring interface on the EMS web server can be accessed via HTTP or HTTPS (required for Remote Probes). If you wish to enable the use of HTTPS, you’ll need to configure IIS on the EMS web server to permit HTTPS connections with an appropriate certificate


System requirements for the EMS web server

EMS may be installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1(we also require PowerShell 3.0 & .NET Framework 4.0) or Windows Server 2012 R2 or later. ENow recommends, but does not require, that you install the most current set of available Microsoft security patches. The IIS role should be enabled and configured with all available role features including IIS6 compatibility. Mailscape Exchange on-premises custom reporting requires the Exchange administration tools for the version of Exchange you’re using to be installed from the Exchange installation media. 


EMS Web Server service account permission requirements: Mailscape 

  • The ENow SQL Service Windows service requires a service account that has the DB Owner role on the SQL Server computer for the “Mailscape” database and local administrator rights on the EMS web server.  

    • If the DBA pre-creates this database before EMS is installed, you will need to manually create and assign permissions to the service account.  

    • If the “Mailscape” database is created by our installer, we will create the service account and assign it the db_owner role on the database. 

    • If Mailscape is enabled as a feature with the Exchange management tools installed on the EMS web server, then please make sure that the ENow SQL Service account is a member of the View-only Organization Management security group and also allow access to the Exchange server URLs using HTTPS from the EMS web server. 

    • If Compass is enabled as a feature, then please allow LDAP connection from the EMS web server. 

    • If Uniscope is enabled as a feature, then the following explicit permissions are required to be effective on the LcsCDR and QoEMetrics databases: CONNECT, EXECUTE, SELECT. 

  • The ENow Namespace Monitor Windows service performs tasks for Mailscape related features only. 

    • If Exchange 2007 or 2010 are being monitored, then the service can be configured to run as local system and this is enabled automatically by the installation program. 

    • If Exchange 2013 or 2016 are being monitored, then the service should be configured to run as a domain account that is a local administrator of the EMS web server and a member of the Exchange Organization Management security group.  In addition, the Exchange Management Tools should be installed on the EMS web server.  Meeting these specific requirements will ensure that the Server Components State dashboard monitoring feature will be functioning properly. 


 Database and storage requirements

  • Our initial method of data storage requires a built in database to exist and grow on a local drive on the EMS web server.   It is recommended to configure the built in database to be on a separate drive from the page file.  Please plan to check sizing guide that is available from the EMS User Guide. 

  • When SQL integration is enabled, we store monitoring and reporting data in SQL Server. You’ll need a computer running SQL Server 2008 or later, with an empty database instance named “Mailscape”. This database instance can be pre-created by a SQL DBA at any time.  

 

ENow Management System 7.0 IIS Web Server Configuration Recommendations For Mailscape Feature Only (If enabling additional features like Compass, then please use the ENow Management System (EMS) Prerequisites document for sizing your Web and SQL servers) 
# of mail boxes/enabled users 
 Dedicated IIS Web Server specifications 
 Dedicated SQL Server specifications 
CPU 
 RAM 
 Disk Space 
 CPU 
 RAM 
 Disk Space 
1-750 
 1 Core 
 4 GB 
 2 GB 
 1 Core 
 4 GB 
 4 GB 
751-2,000 
 2 Core 
 6 GB 
 4 GB 
 2 Core 
 12 GB 
 8 GB 
2,001-10,000 
 2 Core 
 8 GB 
 12 GB 
 2 Core 
 16 GB 
 24 GB 
10,001-20,000 
 2 Core 
 12 GB 
 24 GB 
 2 Core 
 24 GB 
 48 GB 
20,001-40,000 
 4 Core 
 16 GB 
 48 GB 
 4 Core 
 32 GB 
 96 GB 
40,001-80,000 
 4 Core 
 20 GB 
 96 GB 
 4 Core 
 48 GB 
 192 GB 
80,001-160,000 
 4 Core 
 24 GB 
 192 GB 
 4 Core 
 64 GB 
 384 GB 
160,001-240,000
 4 Core 
 32 GB 
 384 GB 
 4 Core
 96 GB 
 768 GB 
240,001-320,000 
 6 Core 
 48 GB 
 768 GB 
 6 Core 
 128 GB 
 1.5 TB 
320,001-480,000 
 6 Core 
 64 GB
 1 TB 
 8 Core 
 256 GB
 3 TB 
480,001-640,000 
 6 Core 
 96 GB 
 3 TB 
 10 Core 
 384 GB 
 6 TB 
640,001-960,000 
 6 Core 
 128 GB 
 6 TB 
 12 Core 
 512 GB 
 12 TB 

Disk Space usage estimates for IIS WEB (12 months) and SQL (6 months) servers are based on average daily message volume. For environments larger than 960,000 mailboxes, please email support@enowsoftware.com for configuration recommendations.


Service Account permission requirements: Client software 

Each Mailscape monitoring client is installed on its respective target server by running the ENowClientSetup.exe executable, which installs the appropriate client according to the target server role: 

  • Mailscape Client on Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013, and Exchange 2016 servers 


 The following table shows the permissions required for the service accounts used by each client type.  Note that all of the clients will require .NET Framework 3.5 or higher and PowerShell 2.0 or higher. 


Client 
 Service(s) 
 Required configuration 
 Notes 
Mailscape 
 ENow Client & ENow Admin 
 Member of the local administrator’s security group 

Member of the Exchange View Only Organization Management security group1 (When the service is a member of View Only Organization Management, the database redundancy monitoring feature is not supported)
 We recommend assigning this account as a member of the Exchange Organization Management security group for full functionality. 

For Exchange 2013 or later, if this service account is a regular domain user (not a managed service account and configured as a member of the Exchange Organization Management security group) with a mailbox enabled then it may be configured as the OWA/ECP test user. 

Exchange 2007 and 2010 environments require the service account to be assigned as a security principal with Reset password set to Allow for the CAS Test Connectivity Users.  These accounts will appear in Active Directory with names starting with “cas_” or “extest_” for Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 respectively.  If these users do not exist, then please plan to run the Get-MailboxServer | .\new-TestCasConnectivityUser.ps1 script from a mailbox server. 

When installing the client on Exchange EDGE servers, only the Local administrator permission is required.



The following table shows the permissions required for the monitoring, reporting, and test accounts used by Mailscape or Mailscape 365.  Note that all of these accounts will need to be configured from the ENow Administration Console. 


Feature 
 Account 
 Required configuration 
 Notes 
Mailscape 


 On premise mail flow internal test account 

 On premise Exchange mailbox enabled 


Exchange Web Services enabled 

 This account may also be used for the following Exchange (Exchange 2013 or later) Namespace Monitoring settings: ActiveSync Test User, EWS Test User, and SMTP Test User. Note that we do not recommend using this account as the OWA/ECP Test User.  We recommend using an account (with mailbox enabled) that is a member of the Exchange Organization Management security group. 
On premise mail flow external test account 
 Gmail, Outlook.com, or Yahoo mailbox enabled
 This mailbox will need to be configured with a forwarding rule that points back to the primary SMTP address of the mail flow internal test account.