Exchange 2007 Monitoring with MOM 2005... Case of the missing cmdlet!

Being that I work with "THE" John Hann (MOM MVP), there never was any question as to which management product I would use to watch over my Exchange servers. And, so, we finally installed the MOM agents on them and watched the events roll in....

For a nice read and a detailed description of how to get MOM 2005 working with Exchange 2007 and what MOM will do for you, check out Anderson Patricio's article series at MSExchange.org:
Monitoring Exchange Server 2007 using MOM 2005 - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

Well, in the events, we come to find that the MOM scripts are failing in trying to test connectivity to OWA, ActiveSync, and the like. So as directed I run a PowerShell script called New-TestCasConnectivityUser.ps1 from the Exchange 2007 scripts directory. This creates a system test mailbox for just this purpose. However, the messages continue to come in and now direct you to run a cmdlet called Set-CasConnectivityCredentials in order "to store this user's credentials for use in testing the Client Access services." Sounds easy enough, except this cmdlet seems not to exist, anywhere......

After basic troubleshooting on the issue (like making sure I spelled it correctly), I start digging in to figure exactly what is going on and why it's calling for a missing cmdlet. I decide to run a couple of the test- cmdlets manually that MOM is having a problem with. Upon doing so, it basically tells me that it has authentication issues with the user I created via the script. I end up checking the account in Active Directory and find it locked out. I unlock it and yet the test cmdlets still fail. And now when all else fails, I do what the error in the cmdlet output tells me to do, which in this case is to run the script again to verify the user exists.... Which of course makes no sense because it created it successfully and I can see it in AD, but I do what it says anyway. So when I re-run it, it does a reset on the credentials of the test account created previously. And wouldn't you know that fixes the problem!! Now the test- cmdlets will run when done manually and after clearing the events in MOM, they don't come back!

The point here isn't that the solution was that difficult to find or figure out, but rather it is difficult to understand what direction you're supposed to go in when you're being told by the product itself, in this case MOM, what to do but are completely unable to do so because it doesn't exist. Lesson learned is: Sometimes you just have to think outside of the box, the MOM alert box that is.....