Transport Extensibility Agents Test

Transport agents let you install custom software that is created by Microsoft, by third-party vendors, or by your organization, on an Exchange server. This software can then process email messages that pass through the transport pipeline. If users complain of delays when receiving or sending mails over the Exchange server, it could be owing to processing bottlenecks with any transport agent. To confirm this, administrators can use the Transport Extensibility Agents test. For every transport agent, this test reports the time taken by the agent to process email messages and the time for which the agent was utilizing the CPU. This clearly pinpoints agents where processing is bottlenecked and those that are hogging CPU resources. If mail flow slows down, such agents can be held responsible for it.

Target of the test : A Microsoft Exchange 2013/2016 server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each transport agent

Configurable parameters for the test
  1. Test period - How often should the test be executed
  2. Host - The host for which the test is to be configured.
  3. port – The port at which the host listens.
Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

Average agent processing time:

Indicates the time taken by this agent to process email messages.

Secs

Ideally, the value of this measure should be low. A high value or a consistent increase in the value of this measure is indicative of a processing bottleneck with the agent.

Average CPU time taken for asynchronous invocation of agent:

Indicates the total time spent in CPU by the synchronous part of asynchronous agents.

Secs

This measure does not give the CPU usage for work that is outside the first synchronous invoke.

By comparing the value of this measure across agents, you can determine which agent’s asynchronous invocations are hogging CPU.

Average CPU time taken for synchronous invocation of agent:

Indicates the total time spent in CPU by synchronous invocations of this agent.

Secs

By comparing the value of this measure across agents, you can determine which agent’s synchronous invocations are hogging CPU.