How can I measure the number of email messages that are going across my Exchange Server per day? I don't have any third-party tools; I'm using Performance Monitor.

A. The best way to gather this data is to use a reporting tool such as Crystal Reports (which is available in the Microsoft BackOffice Resource Kit) to write a report template and let the report do the work for you. Failing that, you can get some gross statistics from Performance Monitor; even rough stats would probably be better than nothing. You could monitor several interesting objects and counters:

• The Outbound Messages Total and Inbound Messages Total counters on the MSExchangeIMC object tell you how many incoming and outgoing messages your Internet Mail Service (IMS) has processed since it was started. Similar counters measure message traffic per hour.
• The MSExchangeIS Private object has separate counters that measure how many recipients on a server have gotten messages (Message Recipients Delivered and Message Recipients Delivered/Hr), how many messages have been delivered to the server (Messages Delivered and Messages Delivered/Hr), and how many messages have been sent (Messages Sent and Messages Sent/Hr).
• The MSExchangeMTA object has the Inbound Messages Total and Outbound Messages Total counters.

Which combination of these counters you monitor will depend on what you want to know. For example, the IMS counters tell you only how much Internet mail has been processed, which might or might not be what you want to know.