In the previous releases, administrators used System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), or another third-party solution, when they needed a comprehensive monitoring solution for Exchange. This involved collecting data and performing actions based on that data if necessary. When Microsoft started developing Exchange 2013, a focus area was to improve end-to-end monitoring in a way that it would work seamlessly for any Exchange deployment, from the largest deployment (Office 365) to the smallest one. By maintaining and developing Exchange Online throughout the past years, Microsoft has learned a lot. As an example, even though there were approximately 1,100 alerts in Exchange 2010 Management Pack, only 150 of those were shown to be useful in Office 365. As such, many were disabled for Exchange Online. The lessons learned from Office 365 led Microsoft to take a different approach towards monitoring.

Exchange 2013 introduces Managed Availability or Local Active...