Email is still important
Email was one of the first communication means invented. Since the very first days of Internet, email as and remains one of the most convenient tools of communication.
It remains one of the most important and quick means of communication, regardless of all the latest plagues like spam. Hence the task is to make this service as reliable and efficient as possible.
This means all the underlying services must be reliable and efficient.
What should we watch
The term «email», in fact, is more than ability to receive and send messages.
To receive email, we would typically use POP3 or IMAP4 protocols. A Web-mail could also be used to work with email (Webmail is often an additional service communicating with underlying SMTP and POP3/IMAP services).
To send mail, we should make use of SMTP.
The mail is often scanned for possible threats (viruses, malware etc). Thus, a virus scanner is required.
The known ports should be open and available for connections.
To receive email,one should usually authentication. Thus, the authentication service(s) must also be available.
If you keep remembering what must be functioning properly, the list of these resources might as well reach several dozens. Server load, disk space, ability to connect to outer world... and so on and so forth. So the phrase «make email service work reliably» assumes quite a lot of monitoring all the underlying services and resources.
The solution
The solution is simple: all the services, resources etc involved must be monitored; and any possible problems with any one of them must be addressed as soon as possible. The question is how to perform the monitoring, what tools to use.
Two days ago we have announced the availability of a major update of IPHost Network Monitor software.
The way we are ensuring our corporate email services works flawlessly is to monitor all the services and resources mentioned above. SMTP, POP3/IMAP4 services, connectivity, server load, disk space, mail queue and all the underlying services must be available and respond quickly enough. The task is to set up the delays and response times that should be seen as appropriate.
An important note: in case you wish to monitor and troubleshoot email service, it is advised to use alert type different from emailing the administrator. To email administrator about email problems might result in no alerts received.
Talking of myself, I prefer Jabber alerts (for less critical events) and SMS (for most critical ones).
