Re: SMTP service stalled

I ran the Best Practices tool and everything was good with the Health check.
I believe I found the issue though. After monitoring the logs I noticed that
we were getting slammed with SPAM messages that were getting bounced by the
IMF, at one point we were getting slammed with like 100 messages a second
which I think brought down the SMTP service. We utilize a 3rd party message
screening service for incoming email and I configured Exchange to only accept
incoming messages from that service's servers and almost immediately the
onslaught ceased. I was hoping we'd be able to get rid of that service once
we moved to Exchange with it's improved message filter tools, but I guess not
if we're going to be slammed when we open up the SMTP service to the greater
web. I'm hoping the new Cisco ASA perimeter system we're getting can take the
place of that messaging service, but I guess we'll see.

Andy, thanks for your help.

-Tim

"Andy David - MVP" wrote:

On Tue, 30 May 2006 12:09:01 -0700, Tim Boyden
<TimBoyden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Ok, I wasn't sure where to do that but I figured it out. I turned logging up
to medium for SMTP, Queuing, Routing Engine, and Connections. Also I get this
error in the Application log after every reboot, but the article says not to
do anything if you're running in the configuration that we are running in
(running Exchange on a domain controller):

The memory settings for this server are not optimal for Exchange.

For more information, click http://support.microsoft.com?kbid=815372


Yeppers.
Wouldnt hurt to run EXbpa against the server as well:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dbab201f-4bee-4943-ac22-e2ddbd258df3&DisplayLang=en

I assume there is nothing else in the event logs that points to
anything at this point.



For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

-Tim

"Andy David - MVP" wrote:

On Tue, 30 May 2006 11:44:01 -0700, Tim Boyden
<TimBoyden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Andy,

No 3rd party utilities have been installed.


You may want to crank up diags in ESM for the MSExchangeTransport and
see if anything pops.
What queue are they stuck in?


Thanks,

Tim Boyden

"Andy David - MVP" wrote:

On Tue, 30 May 2006 11:29:02 -0700, Tim Boyden
<TimBoyden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,

We're running Exchange 2003 SP2 on Windows 2003 R2 which doubles as a
secondary domain controller. We are periodically running into an issue where
e-mail is not able to come in or go out and attempting to restart the SMTP
service results in an error that the service did not respond in a timely
manner. Rebooting the server fixes the problem temporarily until it occurs
again, usually several days later. I'm assuming it's a memory issue, but the
performance monitor shows that there is a minimal amount of memory in use (4
GB total, 3 GB free). Once service is restored it can take hours for back
logged e-mail to be delivered. Any ideas on what is causing this issue and
any solution suggestions?

Thanks,

Tim Boyden



ANy 3rd party software installed that may be hooking into the SMTP
service?
AV, Content filtering etc...



.

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