Messages stuck in the MSMQ queues

Hello Saqib,

It might be your ev is in backup-mode (EV8 and later) or in read-only mode (ev 7.5 and earlier)

That is what the 'remain in pending' indicates.

If that is ok, you might want to check the MSMQ location, especially the SIZE. Check the properties of the MSMQ, and verify the size of the queues is large enough. Do you have any events in EV log, application log, system log?

J3 should have 1 item in it, it is essentially an instruction telling EV to go back and archive the mailbox again.

Hi Gertjan,

I did check on that before, it's not in backup up mode.

With regards to the size, MSMQ is set to the recommended size of 1048576KB (1GB). Checking the current folder size, it is currently 206MB.

Logs, nope, no errors or messages... that's another issue... any ideas?? Any way to fine out if there is a corrupt message that's holding the queues? Been 5 hours like this... though the A6 queue has reduced to 76 items...

Kind Regards,
Saqib

http://evdiscuss.nfye.com/component/content/article/102?format=pdf

Is a break down of what the MSMQ's do. Some only process during scheduled hours, so that might be a place to look. An example of that is the A5 queue which you mention in the OP is stuck.

Also (I think I am right) it is EV best practive for MSMQ to be 8gb

Yes Mohawk, the A5 queue is for scheduled archives. My archiving schedule is from 5am to 11am. I came in at 7am and found them stuck at that point and they remained the same until 11am, and still do. Same thing had happened yesterday as well where when I came in, items were stuck and finally I had to purge them and restart services. Once services were restarted it was around 1pm, my journal archiving continued perfectly, till this morning when the mailbox archiving kicked in and the queues got stuck again.

As for the 8GB practice, usually there would be an error logged that would indicate that 1GB is not sufficient. Currently my queues have reached 206MB only.

Kind Regards,

Saqib

Hello Saqib,

It might indeed by a mail in a mailbox causing this. You will have to dtrace and see if you can catch from there. I suggest you call support, as they should have a good idea when to start tracing, and what to look for.

Having so many items in the Storage Archive queue stands out as a problem to me.  In my experience you rarely, if ever, have items there. I wouldn't reccomend purging the Storage Archive queue.

What type of storage is the Vault Store Partition? If it's Centera, is collections enabled?
If you restart the Storage Service does the number of items in the Storage Archive queue drop at all?

My guess is that there's either a problem writing to the Vault Store Partition location OR you're looking at a performance problem on the Vault Store database end.

When items get put into the 'Failed to Store' folder it's because there was problem with the Storage Service.  My guess is that purging the Storage Archive queue is what caused these messages to be sent to the 'Failed to Store' folder. Nothing to worry about, just move the messages from the 'Failed to Store' folder back to the Inbox of the Journal Mailbox. If they are 'Pending Archive' you may want to reset them so that they are reprocessed. You can use the 'Pending Shortcut Timeout' setting in the Journal Archiving Policy to reset the pending items: http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO37295

I still think you need to look more closely at Vault Store partition and Vault Store database.

Hi JolaineY,

Well I think I found the problem. extensively going through the event logs i found three entries of Event ID 3250, stating messages are corrupt, and they were found at around 5:08am, 5:22am and 6:16am. Hence, if I'm not wrong, I think they were causing the queues to get stuck. I followed the following article:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH59887&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1308569996544

and went on to purge queues. Now the worst part, I purged the Storage Archive, which now seeing your post worries me. Everything seems to be fine now. But after purging items, journaling is getting archived, but I've got around 855 items in "Failed to Store" folder. And all the items are from 6:39am to 8:08am. Journaling has started to increase in size around 8am.

So I'm guessing... those are the items that were in the Storage Archive queue.... Any ideas on what I should be doing? Journaling is at least a mailbox I have access to, do you think there are user mailboxes as well that are failing items??

Kind Regards,

Saqib

Ok, moving those items back to the inbox resolved the issue. They've got archived successfully. But after reading you post, I still would like to know what are the repercussions of purging the Storage Archive Queue. Additionally, this was the Journal mailbox, what about the user mailboxes? Should I expect any issues with user mailboxes? As for the queues, I'm monitoring it and will get back tomorrow to confirm whether it was the 3 corrupt messages that was causing the issue.

Yes, I already used the "Pending Shortcut Timeout" to reset the pending items :)

What should I be looking for in the Vault Store Partition and databases? From what I see, everything is normal, no issues with storage space as well... just the corrupt message I encountered.

Thanks for the help.