Overview of the ExchDump tool for Exchange 2000 Server and for Exchange Server 2003

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Introduction

This article describes the ExchDump tool for Microsoft Exchange Server. This article discusses the output files that this tool creates, the information that this tool collects, and how to obtain this tool.

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Overview

The ExchDump tool is designed to gather configuration information and the current state information of your Exchange organization. This information is useful to help troubleshoot various Exchange Server support issues. This tool does not change any configuration parameters. It is strictly a read-only tool that gathers data. Currently, the ExchDump tool is supported only on the following operating systems:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows 2000

Note The ExchDump tool gathers configuration information for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server and for later versions of Exchange Server. The ExchDump tool does not gather configuration information for earlier versions of Exchange Server.

The ExchDump tool is a command line tool that accepts many different parameters. For a list of these parameters, see the Readme file that is included with the ExchDump tool. The ExchDump tool writes output to two different files. These files are created in the directory that you run the ExchDump.exe file from.

The following two files are created when you run the ExchDump.exe file:

ExchDump_TimeStamp.htm: This HTML file contains a filtered list together with a full list of the attributes and the values that are specific to the requested component. This file contains only the most important attributes to help troubleshoot the greatest range of issues that you might experience in Exchange Server. Depending on the object, this file may also contain a hyperlink to display more details about an object or the permissions for that object.
ExchDump_Timestamp.xml: This XML file contains all the information that is gathered and that is summarized in the ExchDump_TimeStamp.htm file. However, this file includes XML formatting tags.

Currently, the ExchDump tool obtains configuration information from the following sources, depending on the parameters that you specify in the command-line when you run the ExchDump tool:

The Active Directory directory service. The ExchDump tool obtains attribute values and access control list (ACL) entries from Active Directory.
The Metabase. The ExchDump tool obtains only the attributes in the schema for an object.
The Windows registry. The ExchDump tool obtains configuration information about your Exchange installation from the registry.
The Local Security Database (LSA). The ExchDump tool lists the users who have specific rights.
The remote procedure call (RPC) Endpoint Map. The ExchDump tool obtains RPC endpoint information.

You can use the ExchDump tool to collect configuration information about the following specific objects. You can also collect configuration information about any child objects of these objects.

The HTTP protocol object both from the metabase and from Active Directory.
The SMTP protocol object both from the metabase and from Active Directory.
The Active Directory server object.
The Active Directory routing group container.
The Active Directory recipient policy container.
The Active Directory Address Lists container.
The Active Directory Folder Hierarchies container.
The Active Directory ADC Connection Agreements container.
The Active Directory user object. This object uses either the sAMAccountName attribute or the userPrincipalName attribute.
Active Directory group objects.
Active Directory objects by distinguished name (DN).
Active Directory objects, extended rights, or schema entries by GUID.