SMTP end to end test.

I'm trying to figure out how to do an end to end test of a mail server's functionality. Merely checking the that the port is up and the server responds with HELO/EHLO doesn't help, really, I need to know if it will accept a message for delivery.

I don't see this in the stock Email monitor templates. I tried playing with the POP3 User experience template, but that's only half of the battle.

What I need, is for APM to send an email, and at the very least, check for the final response of:

250 2.0.0 <inconsequential_unique_message_id_string> Message accepted for delivery

Can someone respond with where I would find the application components so I can build my own, and/or any examples/pointers to which one I should start with that does something like what I'm trying to do? APM documentation is light on the portion about building custom component monitors.

Another method would be send a test email via SMTP, and then check that it was received via POP3. I have test accounts I can use for such things.

Peter

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FormerMember

Your description sounds like you need the POP3 user experience monitor. If you create a New Template, you'll be able to add the POP3 user experience monitor from scratch.

juliandaniel

Denny,

Same question I was going to ask. We currently use a product called GroupWise (by Novell) for our mail system. I want to replace a system we use to measure round trip time with email to our different sites. The Mapi component is ok for Exchange but I need to build my own custom component for our particular system to use the GroupWise environment and API.

The documentation is quite light in this area so anyone got a user experience with the GroupWise environment, or can point me where I can build my own set-up for this

Thanks

Julian

pserwe

That's funny, the POP3 user experience monitor seems to be incomplete.

I want to send email via one outbound, and check mail delivery via POP on another. I don't run POP3 on my SMTP service, so I need to craft a different component. I'd like to know how I can create a custom monitor, the POP3 user experience monitor doesn't seem to give me enough options to configure properly.

I need to be able to configure an outbound SMTP server/port, and full pop3 credentials - with SSL support.

For the SMTP side:

SMTP server hostname or IP:

SMTP Server port (defaults to 25, but could be changed to 587 or whatever else I might want to send SMTP traffic over):

SMTP Authentication (user/password), could fill from credential list or be manually specified:

For the POP3 side:

POP3 server hostname or IP:

POP3 server username:

POP3 server SSL support:

POP3 server password:

This doesn't seem to be covered with the requisite granularity in the POP3 user experience.

Also, I haven't heard an answer yet to this issue, but how can I modify my own components?

Peter

josh.clark

The only thing you are missing right now is the ability to have separate passwords for your SMTP server and you POP3 server. If you specify that the SNMP server requires authentication, we send the credentials you have configured. We use these same credentials for the POP3 server.

The POP3 server IP is determined by which node the application monitor is assigned to. As I said before, the POP3 credentials are specified by the credentials you select for the component monitor.

pserwe

Right.

My SMTP server that I want to monitor most critically is the one I use to send out Alerts from NPM as the first one.

It requrires no authentication to send email from the NPM/APM box, it's on a trusted localnet as configured in sendmail.

I do not run POP or IMAP on my outbound SMTP. That is more like exchange/server based MUA functionality.

I do however, need to know that my outbound SMTP is up and sending email at all times. I need to know if there's a problem with it.

I really could do just fine with an SMTP monitor that sends a test mail and checks for a 200 OK from the outbound SMTP, any other

response means a failure of some type. The current SMTP monitor doesn't do that, it just checks that the server is listening on the TCP

port, I need to know that the server is *actually* accepting messages for delivery.

Peter

pserwe

I'm saying that the monitor options I have are inadequate. I'm trying to monitor the application SMTP, not POP3, and not the network port.

I don't want to use the same credentials, I need to use no credentials for SMTP and specific credentials for POP3 to a completely different host.

We're in agreement that this is not available currently from SW, so again I reiterate. How can I create my own? Let's assume that I'm capable

of using a text editor, putting files in the right directory, and figuring out the service definition to the best of my ability. If I run into problems,

I'll keep asking questions. So far, that question has been completely ignored from two different customers in the same thread. I cannot believe

we are the only two who want this functionality, and quite frankly, I'm little bit annoyed that I have to constantly get told what I want, or need,

by SW staff when I know what I need, and ask for it very clearly.

This would all be alleviated by giving customers a method for creating custom APM component monitors. I realize that's an undertaking,

but documenting the variables, the scripting language, and the methods for adding them into APM would take care of these issues. It's

a worthwhile one-time (with updates as things change, but that can't be avoided) development/documentation excercise, and it makes

the product much more functional.

Take a look at the competition in Application / Service Monitoring. Nagios and Zenoss which are a lot cheaper if you look at the per

component cost (Nagios free, but difficult to configure, Zenoss $100 per node, not PER COMPONENT - easy, can use Nagios plugins,

and Zenoss is a lot further along in monitoring plugin development). I'm not saying sit there plugin by plugin and reverse engineer

every single method, but definitely take a look at the general field and critically evaluate where you stack up. As an SW customer,

I'm paying a lot for a product that's not very mature, and I'm looking for it to get better, because it integrates with my NMS which

is my centralized method for internal and external clients to look at network and application problems. The pricing of APM is severely

wrong, and the functionality is limited. It should definitely be per node, not per monitor, per node and 88 templates without the ability

to create new ones is limited, at best.

FormerMember

Same question I was going to ask. We currently use a product called GroupWise (by Novell) for our mail system. I want to replace a system we use to measure round trip time with email to our different sites. The Mapi component is ok for Exchange but I need to build my own custom component for our particular system to use the GroupWise environment and API.

What email protocol does GroupWise use? Is it POP3? We have a POP3 user experience monitor that does what you're describing.