The Exchange Server 2010 agent monitors the configured application, determines the status of the configured resources, brings them online, and takes them offline. The agent detects an application failure if the configured Exchange databases or service becomes unavailable. The agent attempts to start the service and mount the database for a configurable number of attempts. If the database cannot be mounted and the services do not start, the agent considers this as an application failure and reports the status to VMware HA.

Depending on the configuration, VMware HA can then restart the virtual machine. After the computer restarts, the agent starts the application services, mounts the databases, and brings the configured resources online on the system.