Enterprise Vault™ Improving the Archiving Throughput of the SMTP Archiving Task
Monitoring the Storage Queue and the SMTP holding folder
The Enterprise Vault Storage service and Indexing service must be able to process the higher incoming load that the SMTP Archiving task generates. If the load generated by the SMTP Archiving task saturates the Enterprise Vault Storage Queue, Enterprise Vault may temporarily cease to queue new items in the Storage Queue.
When the Enterprise Vault Storage Queue temporarily ceases to accept new requests, Enterprise Vault starts logging information in report files in the following folder:
Enterprise_Vault_installation_folder\Reports\SMTP\SMTP_task_name
The report file names have the following format:
EVSMTP_ERROR_LOG_EVserverName_Date_Time_SerialNumber.txt
A warning message in the files indicates that Enterprise Vault is either in backup mode or the Storage service is busy. The reports are part of the standard interaction between Enterprise Vault storage and all archiving agents, and do not necessarily indicate an error condition.
Space in the SMTP holding folder should become available as the SMTP Archiving task processes items in the folder. The space available in the holding folder should even out over a 24-hour period, as there are likely to be quieter periods where incoming email traffic is less. However, repeated attempts to queue items for the Storage service may cause a significant increase in the backlog of items in the SMTP holding folder. This could result in insufficient space on the volume where the holding folder is located.
Caution:
Lack of space in the holding folder not only disrupts SMTP archiving on the Enterprise Vault servers, it also causes a buildup of messages on the servers, such as Exchange Servers, that are journaling messages to SMTP Archiving.
If the following conditions continue over the 24-hour period, it is likely that the SMTP Archiving task load is higher than the Storage service can process:
The backlog of messages in the SMTP holding folder continues to build up.
Free space on the holding folder volume continues to decrease.
Storage service busy messages continue to be logged in the report files that are described earlier in this section.
In this situation, we recommend that you change the number of task threads back to the initial setting of 0 in the Directory database. Before increasing the number of task threads again, you should check the Performance Guide and Best Practices Guide to see if there are ways in which you can tune your Enterprise Vault environment. In particular, consider how you can improve the distribution and management of incoming SMTP traffic.