I would not up the SMTP processes too high without serious considerations
for available resources! Actually, I would not recommend this at all, except
for very specific reasons (this could be one!) and since I do not know of
any 'limits', I would make small increases (no more than 50%) and observing
closely for a while. Someone set his to 100, without doing this and
encountered problems (OS and resource related) that took some time to
resolve.
If you never see more than 10 processes, that could be a problem. If the 10
proceses, becomes 11 (or more) after the next Queue Timer period, and
continues increasing like this, and it tops out at 30 (MaxQueProc) you have
a problem with one or more messages in the Queue and it(they) may need to be
'removed'. If you see the processes go up to 30, hang there for a while,
then drop down (to zero, would be best!), then increase shortly after the
Queue Timer expires or as new mail is put in the Queue, all sounds normal to
me.
How are you putting the messages into the Queue? If you stuff all in there
at once, then 30 processes won't deliver too many before limiting occurs.
So, yes you could up the number of processes, but try 45-50 first and see if
you see a similiar decrease in delivery time for all the messages (45 should
show about 50% shorter, I think). If it does, then experiment with other
MaxQueProc settings.
If you can 'throttle' the input to the Queue, that may help more. If a
message takes just a few seconds to deliver, the just released SMTP process
will be free for another message and if a new message arrives now, it will
be attempted. New mail in the queue will be attempted immediately, but if no
process is available, won't be retried until the Queue Timer expires. If you
can input to the Queue, as fast as it finishes, keeping number of SMTP32
processes near the Max, that would give you the 'fastest' delivery. Of
course, if you have other mail sources (users sending, incoming) you may not
want to exceed about 75% MaxQueProc (leaving a few free for other new mail).
Daniel Donnelly
Ipswitch Technical Support
________________________________________________________
See our Knowledge Base at http://support.ipswitch.com/kb
----- Original Message -----
From: "Len Conrad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 3:27 AM
Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] SMTP Processes
>I currently am trying to send out 26,000 emails and the system is just
>sitting there with 10 SMTP Processes just sitting there.
I would say you need to allow more SMTP processes than 10, maybe hundreds.
I think you can open that number up in the registry, see the KB.
>Why does it seems that it cannot send out mass amounts of email. It seems
>that if the Spool
>directory fills up it just dies.
How do you conclude that the spool directory is "full". Are you out of
disk space in imail\spool partition?
> Any ideas? I really need help!!!!
I guess you see lots of msgs in the Imail queue?
This is a long shot and therefore not at all a silver bullet and w/o
gurantee of hitting any target, but turn on SMTP debugging and then
stop/start the SMTP process, or even reboot NT, to make sure you clear any
deadly embracing locks or orphaned locks.
And check your NT Task Manager constantly. Also, is the DNS that Imail is
queying in good shape and responding?? Sending mail is often slowed
dominantly by DNS queries as Imail tries to find the ip of the destination
server, and then by slowness of the SMTP handshaking between your SMTP
client and their SMTPD server.
Also, make sure your resum� is up-to-date. vbg
Len
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