Barracuda spam filter 300 "deferred" messages inbound
This is an older device, but up until a couple of months ago was fairly reliable. Lately we're seeing a lot of both spam and legit inbound emails being "deferred" due to "timeouts". Some of the legit emails end up getting delivered hours later, but some do not. Some email domains send successfully to us and at other times do not, i.e. there is no common thread in regards to remote domains.
Vendor support claims it must be a network issue somewhere in between our network and the remote mail server, since they see the device connected full 100, no errors there in regards to CRC etc. But since nothing else in our network seems to be having any network-related issues I can only blame the Barracuda device. For example we have a remote desktop server that is being used all the time by 10-15 telecommuters and if it goes down we hear about it.
I'm not seeing any errors on the switch the Barracuda is plugged into either. Besides changing out the Ethernet cable is there anything else you guys (and gals) can recommend? Or hopefully someone has seen this before?? FYI the device is running on the latest firmware.
Vendor support claims it must be a network issue somewhere in between our network and the remote mail server, since they see the device connected full 100, no errors there in regards to CRC etc. But since nothing else in our network seems to be having any network-related issues I can only blame the Barracuda device. For example we have a remote desktop server that is being used all the time by 10-15 telecommuters and if it goes down we hear about it.
I'm not seeing any errors on the switch the Barracuda is plugged into either. Besides changing out the Ethernet cable is there anything else you guys (and gals) can recommend? Or hopefully someone has seen this before?? FYI the device is running on the latest firmware.
ASKER
I've never noticed any inbound emails piling up, queue is almost always close to 0.
I will try the ping to see if there's anything obvious, but i'm not really hopeful, since the problem is very intermittent.
I will try the ping to see if there's anything obvious, but i'm not really hopeful, since the problem is very intermittent.
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Hello again...
If you're having inbound emails pile up on the Barracuda I think that would indicate that emails are getting through from outside. But Barrcuda cannot forward message on to your Exchange... so I would look on the Exchange side. Enable some diagnostic logging.
Nice to-the-point article on tracking/diagnostics:
http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-Server-2003-Mailflow-Part-2.html
Message tracking on one of the senders may not show up if it never lands in the Exchange queues.
Normally I've only seen emails pile up on Barracuda if there is a problem with Exchange.
Like a couple of mail floods we've had due to crazy applications. So, the Barrcuda couldn't xfer to Exchange because Exchange was bogged down.
Performance OK on Exchange? Disk Queue Length?
any odd errors in App log?
If you're having inbound emails pile up on the Barracuda I think that would indicate that emails are getting through from outside. But Barrcuda cannot forward message on to your Exchange... so I would look on the Exchange side. Enable some diagnostic logging.
Nice to-the-point article on tracking/diagnostics:
http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Exchange-Server-2003-Mailflow-Part-2.html
Message tracking on one of the senders may not show up if it never lands in the Exchange queues.
Normally I've only seen emails pile up on Barracuda if there is a problem with Exchange.
Like a couple of mail floods we've had due to crazy applications. So, the Barrcuda couldn't xfer to Exchange because Exchange was bogged down.
Performance OK on Exchange? Disk Queue Length?
any odd errors in App log?
ASKER
Thanks FDiskWizard but the emails aren't getting queued and sitting there, they are getting blocked/rejected with reason "deferred". 99% of them seem to be spam. I believe this has always been the behavior but my assumption is that older firmware never reported this as an "alert" so were never made aware, since we're seeing this only relatively recently after upgrading the firmware. I'm good to leave it alone for now.
We had to upgrade to 600's a while back because of the increase in SPAM. But I don't know if errors were happening. It just got bogged down. So, possibly...
From the Advanced TAB > troubleshooting start a ping on an external IP address.
Maybe your providers 1st hop outside of your network.
See if anything drops.
I started a ping to Yahoo.com while typing... steady at about 50ms.
Also do a ping to an inside IP...