Simple Email Service - SES Test
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a cost-effective email service built on the reliable and scalable infrastructure that Amazon.com developed to serve its own customer base. This service allows you to build an email functionality into an application that you are running on AWS. With Amazon SES, you can send transactional email, marketing messages, or any other type of high-quality content to your customers. You can also use Amazon SES to receive messages and deliver them to an Amazon S3 bucket, call your custom code via an AWS Lambda function, or publish notifications to Amazon SNS.
Amazon SES has a set of sending limits to regulate the number of email messages that you can send and the rate at which you can send them. Depending upon the level of email activity in your environment, you may want to modify these limits, as any violation will result in mails not being sent at all. You may hence have to closely study the email activity in your environment and determine whether/not the sending limits need to be fine-tuned. The Simple Email Service - SES test helps with this! By reporting the send quotas configured along with the count of mails sent and the send rate for the monitored AWS region, this test readily provides you with all the information you need to take the right decision with regards to whether/not the quota needs to be reset.
Also, the key measure of the performance of any email service is successful message delivery. If a majority of the delivery attempts made at any given point in time resulted in bounces, rejections, or complaints, it is a problem condition that warrants an investigation. The Simple Email Service - SES test proactively alerts you to such abnormalities! For the monitored region, the test reports the count and percentage of emails bounced, mails rejected, and complaints received, and notifies you if these values exceed acceptable limits.
Target of the test: Amazon Region
Agent deploying the test: A remote agent
Output of the test: One set of results for the region being monitored
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
Test Period | How often should the test be executed. |
Host | The host for which the test is to be configured. |
AWS Access Key, AWS Secret Key, Confirm AWS Access Key, Confirm AWS Secret Key | To monitor an Amazon instance, the eG agent has to be configured with the access key and secret key of a user with a valid AWS account. For this purpose, we recommend that you create a special user on the AWS cloud, obtain the access and secret keys of this user, and configure this test with these keys. The procedure for this has been detailed in the Obtaining an Access key and Secret key topic. Make sure you reconfirm the access and secret keys you provide here by retyping it in the corresponding Confirm text boxes. |
Proxy Host and Proxy Port | In some environments, all communication with the AWS cloud and its regions could be routed through a proxy server. In such environments, you should make sure that the eG agent connects to the cloud via the proxy server and collects metrics. To enable metrics collection via a proxy, specify the IP address of the proxy server and the port at which the server listens against the Proxy Host and Proxy Port parameters. By default, these parameters are set to none , indicating that the eG agent is not configured to communicate via a proxy, by default. |
Proxy User Name, Proxy Password, and Confirm Password | If the proxy server requires authentication, then, specify a valid proxy user name and password in the proxy user name and proxy password parameters, respectively. Then, confirm the password by retyping it in the CONFIRM PASSWORD text box. By default, these parameters are set to none, indicating that the proxy sever does not require authentication by default. |
Proxy Domain and Proxy Workstation | If a Windows NTLM proxy is to be configured for use, then additionally, you will have to configure the Windows domain name and the Windows workstation name required for the same against the proxy domain and proxy workstation parameters. If the environment does not support a Windows NTLM proxy, set these parameters to none. |
| Measurement | Description | Measurement Unit | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|---|
Sending quota: | Indicates the maximum number of emails that can be sent in a day. | Emails/Day | The sending quota reflects a rolling time period. Every time you try to send an email, Amazon SES checks how many emails you sent in the previous 24 hours. As long as the total number of emails that you have sent is less than your quota, your send request will be accepted and your email will be sent. If you have already sent your full quota, your send request will be rejected with a throttling exception. You will not be able to send more emails until some of the previous sending rolls out of its 24-hour window. |
Total sent: | Indicates the total number of emails sent during the last 24 hours. | Number | If the value of this measure keeps growing closer to the value of the value of the Sending quota measure, it implies a high level of email activity in the region. Under such circumstances, it is best to increase the sending quota, so that the quota is not violated, causing SES to stop sending emails. |
Sends:
| Indicates the percentage of sending quota that was exhausted in the last 24 hours. | Percent | This measure is computed using the following formula: (Total sent / Sending quota) * 100 If the value of this measure is consistently higher than 50%, it implies a high level of email activity in the region. Under such circumstances, it is best to increase the sending quota, so that the quota is not violated, causing SES to stop sending emails. |
Max send rate: | Indicates the maximum number of emails that can send per second. | Emails/Sec | You can exceed this limit for short bursts, but not for a sustained period of time. |
Current bounces: | Indicates the number of emails that were bounced during the last measurement period. | Number | An email is hard-bounced when the email is rejected by the recipient's ISP or rejected by Amazon SES because the email address is on the Amazon SES suppression list. This measure reports the count of hard bounces alone. The value of this measure should be kept at a minimum, as excessive bounces constitute abuse and can put your AWS account at the risk of termination. |
Bounce: | Indicates the percentage of emails that were bounced during the last measure period. | Percent | Ideally, the value of this measure should be very low. A high value constitutes abuse and can put your AWS account at the risk of termination. |
Complaints: | Indicates the number of complaints received during the last measure period. | Number | If an email is accepted by the ISP and delivered to the recipient, but the recipient does not want the email and clicks a button such as "Mark as spam.", then SES will send you a complaint notification. The value of this measure should be kept at a minimum, as a large number of complaints constitute abuse and can put your AWS account at the risk of termination. |
Complaint: | Indicates the percentage of complaints received by this region during the last measure period. | Percent | Ideally, the value of this measure should be very low. A high value constitutes abuse and can put your AWS account at the risk of termination. |
Current rejected: | Indicates the number of emails that were rejected during the last measurement period. | Number | A rejected email is an email that Amazon SES initially accepted, but later rejected because the email contained a virus. Amazon SES notifies you by email and does not send the message. A high value for this measure is a cause for concern as it could indicate that your email system is severely infected. |
Rejected: | Indicates the percentage of emails that were rejected during the last measurement period. | Percent | A high value for this measure is a cause for concern as it could indicate that your email system is severely infected. |
Current delivery attempts: | Indicates the number of mails sent during the last measurement period. | Number |
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