Mail Test

This test monitors the availability of the mail server from an external perspective. To do this, the Mail Test sends a test mail periodically from one user account to another and measures whether the mail was sent successfully and what the delivery time was. This test uses SMTP protocol for sending and POP3 or IMAP protocols for receiving mails.

Target of the test : An Exchange server 2000/2003

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every mail server monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameter	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	Indicates the IP address of the Exchange server.
Port	The port number of the Exchange server’s routing engine.
SendPort	The SMTP port of the mail server. The default SMTP port is 25.
SendUser	Denotes the user name with which the test sends mails.
SendPassword	The password associated with the above user name. The SendUser and SendPassword can be ‘none’ if the target Exchange server does not need authentication to send mails.
Confirm Password	Confirm the SendPassword by retyping it here.
FromID	Takes the email id from which the test generates mails.
ToID	Takes the email id to which the test sends mails. It is advisable that a separate email account be created for the MailTest.
Protocol	The protocol to be used for receiving the mails (could be POP3 or IMAP).
ReceiveHost	Indicates the IP address at which the test receives mails. Typically, this would be the IP address of a POP3 or IMAP server.
ReceivePort	Indicates the port number of the host, which receives the mails. The default port for POP3 is 110 and that of IMAP is 143.
ReceiveUser	Indicates the user name with which the test receives mails.
ReceivePassword	Indicates the password corresponding to the above user.
Confirm Password	Confirm the ReceivePassword by retyping it here.
SSL	If the mail server is SSL-enbled, set this flag to True. By default, this is set to False.
IsPassive	If the value chosen is Yes, then the mail server under consideration is a passive server in a mail server cluster. No alerts will be generated if the system is not running. Measures will be reported as “Not applicable" by the agent if the server is not up.
Here are example settings of the Mail Test parameters: SendUser = sam SendPassword = send user's password FromID = sendtest@test.com ToID = receivetest@test.com Protocol = POP3 ReceiveHost = mail.test.com (the POP3 server's host) ReceivePort = 110 ReceiveUser = mailreceiver ReceivePassword = mailreceiver's password It is advisable that you create a separate user account on your mail server for this test to use.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Ability to send mail	Indicates the availability of the mail server to which the test attempts to connect to send mail	Percent	A value of 0 indicates that the test was not successful in sending a mail. Possible reasons for this could include the mail server being down, the network connection to the server not being available, etc.
Ability to receive mail	Indicates the availability of the POP3/IMAP server to which the test attempts to connect to receive mail messages	Percent	A value of 0 indicates that the test was not successful in receiving a mail message from the POP3/IMAP server. Possible reasons for this could include the POP3/IMAP server being down, the user login being invalid, a failure of the authentication system that the POP3/IMAP server uses for authenticating user requests, etc.
Outstanding messages	Indicates the number of messages that have been sent but have not been received	Number	A large value is usually associated with a very high value of the Roundtrip time measurement. This is usually attributable to excessive load on the SMTP mail server. Delivery delays may also happen if the server is not able to send mail out (e.g., due to DNS failures, due to large number of failed messages which are being retried often, etc.).
Roundtrip time	The average delay between the transmission of one message and its reception by a user.	Mins	This is a key measure of the quality of the mail service. An increase in Roundtrip time may be indicative of a problem with the SMTP mail service. Possible reasons could include spamming, queuing failures, disk space being full, etc.

Note:

The accuracy of the Roundtrip time measurement is dependent on the frequency at which the Mail test is executed. For example, assume that Mail test is executed once every 5 minutes. Since the Mail test only checks for message receptions every time it executes, the Roundtrip time may be reported as 5 mins even if the message has actually been delivered to the user within a minute of its transmission.