Monitoring the Postfix Mail Server

The monitoring model that eG Enterprise offers out-of-the-box, is typically meant for situations where administrators only want to know whether the mail server is available or not, how quickly is it able to send/receive mails, and alongside determine the overall health of the mail server host. To assess these performance parameters, users can manage any mail server, regardless of type (Exchange, Domino, etc.), as a generic Mail server using the eG administrative interface.

Figure 1 : The layer model of Postfix Mail Server

Each layer of Figure 1 is mapped to a variety of tests each of which report a wealth of metrics related to the queues of the Postfix mail server. Using these metrics administrators can find quick and accurate answers to the following queries:

  • What is the total size of the active queue?
  • In which time duration, the number of messages in the active queue were the highest - is it less than 5 minutes? between 5 and 10 minutes? between 10 and 20 minutes? between 20 and 40 minutes? between 40 and 80 minutes? between 80 and 160 minutes? between 160 and 320 minutes? between 320 and 640 minutes? between 640 and 1280 minutes? or is it above 1280 minutes?
  • What is the total size of the incoming queue?
  • In which time duration, the number of messages in the incoming queue were the highest - is it less than 5 minutes? between 5 and 10 minutes? between 10 and 20 minutes? between 20 and 40 minutes? between 40 and 80 minutes? between 80 and 160 minutes? between 160 and 320 minutes? between 320 and 640 minutes? between 640 and 1280 minutes? or is it above 1280 minutes?
  • What is the total size of the hold/deferred/maildrop queues?
  • In which time duration the number of messages in the hold/deferred/maildrop queues were the highest - is it less than 5 minutes? between 5 and 10 minutes? between 10 and 20 minutes? between 20 and 40 minutes? between 40 and 80 minutes? between 80 and 160 minutes? between 160 and 320 minutes? between 320 and 640 minutes? between 640 and 1280 minutes? or is it above 1280 minutes?