How to monitor mail servers

First, the preface

With the major websites have launched a mailbox billing services, the vast number of netizens are gradually adapting to the concept of "paid service", at the same time, they also pay the quality of the mailbox to put forward higher requirements. In the face of the vast number of netizens concerned about the quality of mailbox services, Dragon Technology pole Chinabyte, from the independent perspective of the third party, based on the principle of openness, fairness, 6 of the main portal site billing service quality evaluation. Through the breakdown of evaluation process and results, combined with the successful experience of Dragon technology in the field of network fault performance monitoring, Dragon technology design introduces the mail Service monitoring solution combining with the firewall and the operators.

Ii. Monitoring Objectives

The purpose of the Mail Service monitoring is to ensure the availability, usability and stability of the mail service, so that customers can send and receive mails quickly and efficiently. From the perspective of customer use, you can divide the above objectives into:

1, to ensure that the service success rate of nearly 100%, so that users can log in at any time to use the mailbox.

2, the user to perform a single operation of the task time control in 5 seconds. With the improvement of network infrastructure and the application of broadband, the network speed is getting faster, and the user's endurance to network response time is reduced from 8 seconds to 5 seconds, that is, the time limit that the user can endure is 5 seconds when downloading a page or completing a single operation task on the web.

3, improve the network transmission rate. By optimizing the configuration of server hardware and software, optimizing the Web design, optimizing the network application structure to improve the network transmission speed.

III. Monitoring Programme

The monitoring of mail services should take into account both the mail system and users, because on the one hand, the mail system to maintain 24*7 stable, efficient operation is to provide quality service premise; On the other hand, only the data measured from the client can reflect the quality of the mailbox. Therefore, Dragon Technology proposes an integrated solution that monitors both the system's internal and end-user side. Take a look at the picture below.

Comprehensive and deep monitoring of the mail system from inside the firewall

According to the above figure, for the internal monitoring of the mail system, the use of the Siteview monitoring system is carried out in the following four aspects.

1, the mail system monitoring

L for the hardware of the mail server: CPU, memory, hard disk, network card and other monitoring;

• Monitoring of the process of mail services, including whether the process is functioning properly and the machine resources consumed by the process.

2, the Message performance monitoring

Take Microsoft's Exchange server, for example, to monitor the number of POP3 links and successes, the number of OLE DB finishes and submissions, and so on.

3, mail application monitoring

Periodically send and receive messages by simulating user behavior to verify the success of mail delivery and completion time.

4. Related monitoring

For the B/s structure of the mail service, the performance of the WWW service, the success of the domain name resolution, network throughput will affect the quality of mail services. Therefore, the relevant parameters should be carried out in a comprehensive and in-depth monitoring.

Monitoring of the four aspects of the mail system can be achieved through the following Siteview monitors:

Mail Monitor;

CPU monitor;

Memory Monitor;

Disc Monitor;

Network Monitor;

Port Monitor

DNS Monitor;

Aapche monitoring;

URL Monitor;

Ping the Monitor;

Process Monitor

Siteview is an operating-level network management system that is installed within the user's IT system, focusing on fault monitoring and performance diagnostics, using a agentless, centralized monitoring approach that eliminates the need for any agent software to be installed on the monitored server. Siteview with more than 30 kinds of monitors, network applications, network equipment, server hardware and applications for comprehensive, in-depth, real-time monitoring, and provide a sound monitoring, alarm and alarm platform to help users easily achieve system Management automation. Once the system is abnormal, the early warning will be through the voice, e-mail, mobile phone messages, post and script, and so on timely notify the relevant personnel or automatic fault handling, so as to minimize the possibility of IT system failure, reduce the loss that may bring to the enterprise. The perfect Performance analysis report, can help the network management personnel to prevent the possible breakdown, simultaneously provides the basis for the enterprise network Strategic planning.

Real-time analog monitoring of mail service from external client of firewall

For client monitoring, the main use of Dragon Technology Dragonwatch monitoring System, using its agents across the country, from close to the end users of the backbone network nodes, analog users to send and receive e-mail online e-commerce process, the mail service for real-time monitoring, By analyzing the monitoring data, the performance of the mailbox service is quantified, the final quality of the mailbox service is defined, and the network bottleneck of the message from server to end client is analyzed and diagnosed.

The success rate of mailbox service use;

Mailbox service response time;

Average network transmission rate;

e-Mail Service e-business process breakdown of the steps;

TCP/IP network transmission process and index refinement for each process of mailbox service

Web Page Component Analysis

Network Routing tracing Analysis