Monitor Exchange, Lotus Notes Mail, and IP-based SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 email servers and routing using Topper's award-winning email monitoring.
Real emails sent to remote email servers and the deliver is timed. These delivery times
are recorded for alarming and reporting purposes. You set the time thresholds and if any email tests are delayed,
then selected network personnel are immediately notified. Since 1992, Topper has been monitoring email.
Real emails sent through the production email system is the surest
method of monitoring service levels. Email monitoring using this probing method reflects exactly what the users are
seeing. If anything is broken: software, hardware, network, DNS, etc... Our email monitoring uncovers the delay!
Below we see email monitoring of of 15 servers in 15 cities. The time the 15 tests went
out is the same 10:55 PM and 56 seconds. The delivery times are quite good - between 1 to 3 seconds.
Email Monitoring White Paper
Most email environments consist of a single technology set (Notes or Exchange or SMTP/POP3/IMAP4).
Other networks often have multiple technologies with email gateways and email routers to connect them.
Enterprise email monitoring sends probes throughout that network from one or more email servers to
other remote email servers. These are real emails sent at regular consistent intervals.
Also included are one or two tests to confirm that internet gateways are also functioning.
There are several different ways to test your email routes and their delivery times.
There are loop-back probes which go to the remote servers and return immediately. Loop-back
tests can done with to any email system where a server rule to return-to-sender can be set up. This would include
Novell GroupWise and the many IP-based email servers.
Other tests can be sent by Topper from one server and picked up by Topper at the remote site.
In heterogeneous email environments, Topper's flexible email tesing can initiate probes from one environment, such as Exchange,
and receive and record delivery to another environment such as Lotus Notes Mail. These are
point-to-point tests which test gateways and routers between these
environments. Topper can do this because it can attach to multiple email systems concurrently
both sending and receiving. This gives you the flexibility to test any route
on a 24 by 7 basis.
This flexibilty can be used in many creative ways depending upon what your needs are. Most
email monitoring use email test probes in a single Star
Topology (one-to-many) where Topper sends out it's tests and receives responses
from a single email account. These tests utilize the loop-back technique mentioned above.
This approach can be extended into two or more sending and/or receiving points. It just means
that Topper will use several concurrent email mailboxes to route tests to and from
different email sub-nets in a multiple Star Topology (many-to-many).
This can be as straightforward as one or more Exchange mailboxes positioned within different
email sub-nets or as interesting as having Topper send into many SMTP gateways positioned
throughout the enterprise and have the responses received at one or more different mailboxes.
The point being that Topper flexibly perform round-the-clock confirmation that email delivery routes
are flowing.
You can have many good and useful monitoring tools that detect specific problems.
Probing is at the highest level where the users are. Regardless of what condition the network
is in, email probing gives you the user-view and the reporting
statistics to demonstrate it.
These statistics can be used report on service levels throughout the organization. The two most important metrics
being: Service Level Percentage and
Average Delivery Time.
Service Level Percentage reports on the number of Topper email tests which met the current service level.
That service level might be published as mail be delivered within 15 minutes.
Topper would then simply tally up those email tests that exceeded that limit and subtract that from 100%.
Average delivery time would be the average of all delivery tests. The reporting periods that seem most useful are:
a daily report and a monthly report.
In addition to email probing, Performance Monitoring of Windows
counters, services, and event logs will alarm on trouble spots. Performace
monitoring can target key areas such as MTA process, work queues, and remote connections.
On the Notes side, some of the same counters are very important as well as the monitoring of
Mail.Box, making sure that messages are not building up too high and
alarming if that number reaches pre-defined thresholds.
