EmailART Check

Description

The email application response time, or EmailART, check monitors the availability and performance of your email applications. The following statistics are collected by the EmailART check:

• Total Response Time
• Total Send Time
• Total Receive Time
• Send Handshake Time
• Receive Handshake Time

It includes a built-in availability service check (passive) and a default threshold check to actively monitor the Total Response Time statistic. Additional threshold checks may be added to monitor other statistics. Multiple mail servers may be monitored from within the same EmailART check.

Details

(See Create an EmailART Check for information about creating the EmailART check.)

Netreo's EmailART check makes use of synthetic checks to send test emails and measure the response performance of your mail application. Each synthetic check can monitor a different email application and uses two mail servers: The internal server to check (the receive server) and a (preferably) external server off of which to reflect email (the send server). The send server can be any working email account to which Netreo can connect using SMTP (you may wish to set up a separate email account just for this purpose). By using two servers in this way, Netreo is additionally able to passively verify that a network is able to connect to the internet.

Much like a WebART check, the EmailART check isn't actually a single check itself, but rather a collection of related checks designed to monitor the performance of a single target email application. It is the second most complex of the check types (after the WebART check) and, in some ways, is actually more similar to a managed device than a type of check—in that it is a self-contained, discreet entity that gets checked for availability and is polled for multiple types of statistical data. Since the email application check is not associated with any specific host, it doesn't appear in device-based dashboards such as the Tactical Overview. Instead, it gets its own dedicated dashboard.

Although it looks very similar to a WebART check, the email application check is configured and activated very differently. A brief explanation of these differences will be helpful in understanding the application of the email check.

Although visually similar, the underlying principals of the two checks are very different. The implementation of WebART checks assumes that multiple and varied web-based applications are being used and monitored by an organization. Thus, Netreo allows you to create as many WebART checks as required to monitor all of your different web-based applications. Conversely, most organizations typically tend to rely on a single email application to service the entire organization. Thus, Netreo allows you to create only one email application check—as more than one is virtually never necessary.

Another difference is in their use of synthetic checks. Where WebART checks utilize multiple synthetic checks to simulate a complex path of application use, the email application check rarely uses more than a single synthetic check, which forms a core part of the check's configuration. This synthetic check is where the application and server data for connecting to the email service is configured.

Since the email application check monitors an email system by sending test emails in one direction, a second synthetic check may occasionally be added to test the service using the reverse path.