Mail Server Statistics Test

Configuring a Confluence server to send email messages allows Confluence users to:

Receive emailed notifications and daily reports of updates: You can 'watch' a page, blog post or space. Confluence can be configure to send users a notification by email whenever anyone adds or updates content on a page, blog post, or space that they are watching/following. Users typically receive immediate emails for important notifications (like mentions and new pages). However, when lots of changes are being made at the same time, users will only receive a single email with all the changes within a short window (usually 10 minutes).
Send a page via email: Users can email the link to a page or blog post that they are viewing to any recipient of their choice.

If users fail to receive email notifications of updates or emails containing links to pages of interest to them, it is bound to adversely impact user productivity and shake user confidence in Confluence. If this is to be avoided, then administrators should track emails sent by Confluence to users, promptly capture delivery failures, and rapidly troubleshoot the failures before users notice that something is amiss. This is where the Mail Server Statistics test helps!

This test automatically discovers the mail servers that Confluence is configured with, and tracks the emails sent by each mail server. In the process, the test promptly captures email delivery failures, and swiftly alerts administrators to the failures, so that administrators are enabled to quickly investigate and isolate the reason for the failures and fix them.

Target of the test: Atlassian Confluence

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each mail server configured for the target Confluence server

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test period	How often should the test be executed
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port number at which the specified host listens to
JMX remote port	Here, specify the port at which the JMX listens for requests from remote hosts. Ensure that you specify the same port that you configured in the catalina.bat file in the <<ATLASSIAN_CONFLUENCE_INSTALL_DIR>>\confluence\bin directory.
JNDIname	The JNDIname is a lookup name for connecting to the JMX connector. By default, this is jmxrmi. If you have resgistered the JMX connector in the RMI registry using a different lookup name, then you can change this default value to reflect the same.
JMX Registry SSL	If you have registered the JMX connector in an SSL-enabled RMI registry , set this flag to Yes. By default, this is set to No.
User, Password, and Confirm password	If JMX requires authentication only (but no security), then ensure that the user and password parameters are configured with the credentials of a user with read-write access to JMX. Confirm the password by retyping it in the Confirm Password text box.
Timeout	Specify the duration (in seconds) for which this test should wait for a response from the target server. If there is no response from the target beyond the configured duration, the test will timeout. By default, this is set to 10 seconds.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Emails attempted	Indicates the number of email messages that this mail server has tried to send.	Number	This is a good indicator of the workload of a mail server.
Emails sent	Indicates the number of emails successfully sent by this mail server.	Number	Ideally, the value of this measure should be the same as the value of the Emails attempted measure. If this measure value is less than the value of the Emails attempted measure, it indicates that one/more attempts have failed
Emails failed	Indicates the number of emails that could not be delivered by this mail server.	Number	Ideally, the value of this measure should be 0. A non-zero value is indicative of email delivery failures.
Success percentage	Indicates the percentage of attempted email deliveries that were successful.	Percent	Ideally, the value of this measure should be 100%. A low value indicates that many emails were not delivered.
Failed percentage	Indicates the percentage of attempted email deliveries that failed.	Percent	Ideally, the value of this measure should be 0. A high value indicates that many emails were not delivered. In such a situation, you may want to do the following: Ensure that you have properly configured an SMTP Server. Send a Test Mail inside the SMTP Server configuration setup screen. Make a note of any error that is returned from the test. Check your JIRA application log files and the application server log files for Out of Memory errors. Typically, the log file will show java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space. This has been known to cause the service responsible for sending emails out to fail until your applications are restarted. You should further troubleshoot your memory issues. Check and ensure the Mail Queue Service is installed. Click Admininstration > Services to inspect that the service exists, and is set at a reasonable interval. This interval controls how frequently the mail queue is processed. You can flush the mail queue to send out pending messages immediately to your mail server. Inspect your Mail Queue under Administration > Mail Queue. See if you are given the option to Bypass currently sending mail. A stuck email or trackback ping can hold up the queue. Check that your Base URL is set to a domain / IP which your SMTP server will accept. Example: Google apps accounts must have a matching base url to their Google Apps domain. Enable additional logging in Administration > System > Troubleshooting and Support > Logging and Profiling by setting the following to DEBUG to see more robust logging about services running at the background.