Forum Discussion

James_Slack's avatar
James_Slack
Level 6
11 years ago

Probles with A queues A5 A6 and A7

Hi,

I have 2 servers and looking in the Message Queuing I can see a backlog of messages in there.

 

Server 1

A5 = 4240

A6 = 10329

A7 = 419

 

Server 2

A5 = 1341

A6 = 6786

A7 = 202

 

I have done some basic things to see if they will go down, change the schedule, stop archiving for a bit, reboot etc. Nothing. It seems this lot is stuck in the queues.

My questions are this.

1) What are each queue used for?

 

2) How do I clear down each queue and would we lose data doing so?

Configuring
Enterprise Vault
Error messages
Information Governance
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • JesusWept3's avatar
    JesusWept3
    11 years ago
    A7 = scheduled mailbox synchronization A6 = moved shortcut processing (updates the folder and retention categories when Items are moved) A5 = scheduled mailbox archiving Have a look on your SQL server and see if your CPU is through the roof Moved item processing can be quite intensive and if you don't do regular maintanance on your SQL server, ie index rebuilds, then you can cause major slow downs on SQL etc which slow everything down
  • EdLacey's avatar
    EdLacey
    11 years ago

    If your server has the recommended rather than the minimum amount of CPU's for the version of EV you're running and they're not maxed out during an archive task then definitely increase Archive Processes but be cautious. First, try increasing the number to equal the amount of CPU's (I'll assume 8) then monitor performance during an archive run. If CPU's/Memory aren't maxed out try increasing to 10 then 12.

    Have a read of the relevant Performance Guide for your version of EV

    http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC2200

     

    If your EV server is virtualised take a look at this best practise guide

    http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH180094

     

17 Replies

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  • James_Slack's avatar
    James_Slack
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Sorry for lack of info here, had someone waiting for something over my shoulder during writing the above.

    This is Vault 10 on 2008R2. Archiving seems to be happening OK even though there seems to be items stuck in these queues.

    The reason I found these is I keep getting failed items when I am importing PSTs. This may be unrelated to that issue, but I found it and I guess it's not right.

  • JesusWept3's avatar
    JesusWept3
    Level 6
    11 years ago
    A7 = scheduled mailbox synchronization A6 = moved shortcut processing (updates the folder and retention categories when Items are moved) A5 = scheduled mailbox archiving Have a look on your SQL server and see if your CPU is through the roof Moved item processing can be quite intensive and if you don't do regular maintanance on your SQL server, ie index rebuilds, then you can cause major slow downs on SQL etc which slow everything down
  • James_Slack's avatar
    James_Slack
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Argh. Page just swalloed my reply!

    SQL is fine, 0% CPU with the odd 1% / 2% blip. Memory is fine too.

     

    Looking at the A5 queues I see a mix of live users, deleted users (that I need to tidy up I guess) and "deprovisioned" users (who should all be live users as far as EV is concerned.

    A6 probably shows similar but of all the ones I checked they were live users

    A7 shows a mix of deleted, deprov, disabled and probably some live users (from memory having just lost my lengthy reply).

    What do I do next please?

     

     

  • EdLacey's avatar
    EdLacey
    Level 5
    11 years ago

    You can quite safely purge the A5 queues which will then give the other 2 queues a chance to purge themselves.

     

    As your A5 queues are not clear at the end of a scheduled archiving task you need to tune the relevant tasks.

    1. Expand the archiving window during the week

    2. Can you run the archiving tasks all day during the weekend?

    3. Decrease the amount of items archived per pass if you can't do either of the above (default is 1000)

    4. On the Advanced tab of the Storage Service is the Archive Processes value still the default of 5?

  • James_Slack's avatar
    James_Slack
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Hi,

    The archiving schedule was actually set to 24x7.

    I have only just today (on advice I found searching before posting here) changed my schedule to stop for 15 minutes every 4 hours.

    I'll just look up the other settings now...

     

     

  • James_Slack's avatar
    James_Slack
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Hi,

    3) It is still at the default of 1000 - is this OK?

    4) This is also at the default of 5.

    Thanks

  • James_Slack's avatar
    James_Slack
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Is there a way to drain these queues down?

    Like if I was to change the archive schedule to not archive new items or something?

     

    Since this morning the

    A5s have gone down a bit

    A6s have gone up a bit

    A7s have gone up 1 each.

     

  • EdLacey's avatar
    EdLacey
    Level 5
    11 years ago

    If your server has the recommended rather than the minimum amount of CPU's for the version of EV you're running and they're not maxed out during an archive task then definitely increase Archive Processes but be cautious. First, try increasing the number to equal the amount of CPU's (I'll assume 8) then monitor performance during an archive run. If CPU's/Memory aren't maxed out try increasing to 10 then 12.

    Have a read of the relevant Performance Guide for your version of EV

    http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC2200

     

    If your EV server is virtualised take a look at this best practise guide

    http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH180094

     

  • James_Slack's avatar
    James_Slack
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Hi,

    We are nowhere near maxing out the CPU, we average 8% with tiny bursts up to 20%.

    I'll have a read through the doc and whack it up and see if it helps.

    Thanks

  • James_Slack's avatar
    James_Slack
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Thanks, the guide says up it and if you have 4 cores then you should be on at least 10. I started with 10 and then tried 12, it's making little to no difference (I have restarted the services).

    Is there an upper limit or is this purely a hardware limit.

    Can I set 20? 30?

    It's 2x Intel Xeon X5650s (6 cores / 12 threads per server @ 2.66 GHZ) so a total of 12 cores / 24 threads.

    The box has 48GB of ram of which we have 11gb free right now.

    Thanks