Monitoring Benefit
The Server Component States check retrieves the configured state of the Exchange components and endpoints on the monitored server — whether each one is Active or Inactive.
Component states are how Exchange takes parts of a server out of service without stopping anything. That makes them useful for maintenance and dangerous when forgotten: an Inactive component means that function is deliberately switched off, the service is still running, nothing logs an error, and the work simply does not happen. A component left Inactive after a patch window is one of the quieter ways a server stops doing its job.
How do we verify the monitoring test results?
1. List the component states. From the Exchange Management Shell on the affected server:
Get-ServerComponentState2. Find out who set it, and why. Each component state carries a requestor — the entity that last changed it. This matters because a component can be held Inactive by several requestors at once, and it only returns to Active when every one of them has released it. Setting it Active as the wrong requestor appears to work and changes nothing.
3. Check whether maintenance mode is still on. The most common cause by far is a server left in maintenance mode after patching or a DAG operation. Confirm the maintenance procedure was completed rather than abandoned partway.
Common warning or error results, and potential solutions
| Result | Potential solution |
| Inactive status after a maintenance window | Maintenance mode was not fully reversed. Complete the exit procedure rather than setting individual components Active by hand. |
| Component will not return to Active | Another requestor is still holding it Inactive. Identify every requestor on that component and release each one — the component stays Inactive until all of them have. |
| Server appears healthy but handles no traffic | Exactly what this check exists to catch. Services are running and reporting fine; the components are switched off. Check component states before investigating the services. |
| Frontend Transport goes Inactive unexpectedly | Can be set by Managed Availability in response to a detected problem rather than by a person. Look for the underlying fault it was reacting to before forcing it back to Active. |
| Results are stale rather than failing | If several unrelated checks stopped updating at the same moment, look at the ENow SQL database connection rather than at Exchange. |
Monitoring page. The detail behind this indicator is served by the ENow web server at:
http://localhost:20080/MailscapeWeb/ServerComponentStates.aspx?server=<SERVER>Replace localhost with the web server's host name if you are browsing from elsewhere, 20080 with your own port if it was changed at installation, and <SERVER> with the monitored server you are investigating.
Reference. Get-ServerComponentState and Determine the requestor that changed a server component state.
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