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Improving Disk I/O and Overall Performance for Your Mail Server, Part 1

May 16, 2013 by ST-DCurtis Leave a comment

While SmarterMail 11.x has a significant number of changes that greatly increase the performance and reliability of your mail server, there are still some configuration tweaks that mail admins can use to further increase performance. In this three part series (there’s a LOT to discuss) we’ll look at a few things you can do to increase the overall lperformance of your mail server beyond simply using SmarterMail. Part One will cover general server settings, Part Two will cover SmarterMail and Part Three will cover tweaks to email clients and devices as well as hardware changes to increase performance.

It doesn’t even matter if you’re running SmarterMail – any mail server will benefit from the various hardware, software and end-user/device mods mentioned. If you’re doing some of these already, then you’re ahead of the curve. However, read through and see if you can grab one or two more that allow you to squeeze the most out of your mail server performance.

Mail Server Settings

There are some changes that can be made to how your mail server is set up as well as some file system changes that can help increase performance. Below are a few ideas to get you started.

Use Robust Anti-virus

Use of good, robust antivirus software can help keep your mail server running smoothly by..well, scanning for, and removing, potential viruses that can come into your system via email. Antivirus software should be configured to scan messages as well as attachments, though care should be taken when designating where, and how often, some sections of your mail server are actively protected. See the next point, as an example. SmarterMail comes with ClamAV, an open-source anti-virus software, that can be configured when the mail server is set up, free of charge.

Limit the Resident Shield (or Similar) Component

Many anti-virus applications have a component that runs in the background that scans every single file that is copied to, saved to or even opened on the mail server. While these components allow system administrators to keep their mail servers virus-free, on heavily-used mail servers this can be a real drain on system resources. Therefore, it’s best to limit the resident shield component to only those locations that will most benefit by setting up exceptions in your anti-virus administration area.

Limit Where and What Is Scanned by A/V

In addition, you’ll only want to scan messages that come into the spool, and if possible, only scan writes and remove scans of disk reads. Disk i/o and CPU can be heavily taxed when scanning mailboxes over and over and over again. While you can run periodic checks on the server as a whole, maintaining the spool is the best way to ensure your mail server is virus-free as the only way a file can get to a mailbox is when it is written to the spool or to working/temp directories. Therefore, scanning writes only is a great way to keep your mail server virus free. Some may see this as a possible decrease in overall server security, but it will result in dramatic improvements to overall disk i/o and utilization.

Disable Pagefile

Opinions on the advantages of disabling the Windows pagefile vary: some say you should keep it “just in case” while others say that modern applications will never need it, so why keep it? Besides, most businesses run servers with more than enough RAM to compensate for any potential benefits that the pagefile represents. Therefore, you may as well disable your pagefile. The only time it’s beneficial is if you’re running a mail server with 4GB of RAM or less – and, to be honest, why would you do that?

Disable IIS Logging for the Webmail interface

Any Web hosting provider offering Windows hosting can attest to how IIS log files can grow..and grow…and grow. That’s great for customers’’ sites, but it’s not something you necessarily want to have happen to the SmarterMail Web interface. There’s enough reporting within SmarterMail for end users and administrators that seeing views, visits and hits isn’t necessary. Therefore, when you set up SmarterMail as a site in IIS (which is highly recommended in our system requirements), it’s a good idea to simply disable IIS logging for that site. Use the reports within SmarterMail versus using the IIS logs to generate reports.

A Few Other Items

There are a few other things that can be done to help optimize your mail server. These are pretty self-explanatory, so we’ll just bullet point them:

Disable hibernation or sleep for your server
Disable Windows Indexing as this reduces overall disk i/o and extends SSD life
Make sure write caching is enabled
Disable defrag for your spool, especially if you’re using a SSD
Defrag RAID arrays at least every couple of days, but do it off hours if possible
Do NOT use a realtime defragger – only use the one within Windows itself
Don’t defrag while backing up your mail server

There you have it. A few tips to help maximize the performance of your mail server. In Part Two, we’ll discuss some settings for SmarterMail itself, though these tweaks can possibly be made to any mail server, so stay tuned!

Filed under SmarterMail, SmarterTools Tagged with email, email server, mail server performance, mail server software, Microsoft, Microsoft Exchange, server tweaks, SmarterMail, Web hosting, Windows, Windows Server

SmarterTools Product Integrations

May 9, 2013 by ST-DCurtis 1 Comment

As many of you have noticed, with the most recent releases of all three of our products, we’ve also released (or upgraded) a few integration modules for some popular Web hosting control panels. Most notably, we now offer integrations of SmarterMail and SmarterTrack for customers using WHMCS and we have a provisioning module for the new Parallels APS program that works with the Parallels Operations Administrator (POA). When you couple these with the existing integration we have for WebsitePanel, that means that SmarterTools’ products are now available for virtually any control panel Web hosts, ISPs, small businesses and others have available to them for managing their businesses.

Below is a brief discussion of what each integration brings to customers. Also, each module discussed and linked-to was built by our own developers. While there are other modules available, the modules discussed below are the “official” integration modules, built by SmarterTools and documented in the help files associated with each product.

SmarterMail and WHMCS

SmarterMail offers a fantastic alternative for hosters and ISPs using WHMCS and CPanel for management of Linux shared, dedicated and VPS packages. While SmarterMail does require a Windows server to run, the feature-set available with SmarterMail, as well as its ease of management, stability, reliability and security features make it a perfect email solution regardless for Linux providers. Here’s a great example of one provider using SmarterMail, and the WHMCS integration, for their shared Linux hosting plans.

The SmarterMail module provides the following services:

Create, suspend, un-suspend, terminate, and delete domains from a SmarterMail server.
Multiple SmarterMail server support with management side interface for adding, deleting, suspending and unsuspending SmarterMail servers as well as setting max domain levels per server.
Client side link to a SmarterMail webmail login.
SSL support.

More information on the SmarterMail module can be found on the WHMCS SmarterMail Provisioning Module page of the SmarterMail help document.

SmarterTrack and WHMCS

While WHMCS offers a standard ticketing support solution as well as a knowledge base system, SmarterTrack provides a more more robust and feature-rich customer service helpdesk for hosting providers and ISPs. The integration module we created will replace the ticketing and KB systems that are part of a generic, default WHMCS installation. In addition, users can add in live chat functionality by simply generating live chat code and adding it to any page on their site.

The SmarterTrack module provides the following:

The ability to override the knowledge base links within WHMCS to redirect to SmarterTrack’s knowledge base articles.
The ability to provide live chat support links within WHMCS that will pop up a SmarterTrack live chat within the WHMCS interface.
The ability to override “contact us” emails to start a ticket within SmarterTrack rather than an email to a chosen email address. The ticket will also have a different comment added to it that states it was submitted via Sales Acquisition. You also get to specify which department these tickets are automatically submitted to.
Full email ticket support, including:
- Include / exclude departments based on settings within SmarterTrack.
- Full custom field support.
- A comment added to every ticket submitted to show it was created through WHMCS.
- Customizable auto responders with the ability to direct ticket links to WHMCS rather than SmarterTrack.
- View all tickets on the support tickets page and all open tickets on client area page.
- Restrict users from closing tickets based on settings set in SmarterTrack.
Help phone number and / or email address are displayed on error pages.
Full email / username and password sync support between WHMCS and SmarterTrack. This means that whenever a client changes their email or password in WHMCS, the change will also reflect within SmarterTrack.
A page in the management interface of WHMCS for syncing SmarterTrack and WHMCS users. (SmarterTrack uses the client’s email address for the username).
Full open source module with language string overrides, a custom style sheet and custom client template pages that can all be modified to serve a company’s needs.

More information on the SmarterTrack module can be found on the WHMCS SmarterTrack Provisioning Module page of the SmarterTrack help document.

The SmarterMail APS Module for Parallels

The Parallels APS program is quickly becoming the de-facto standard for businesses – even businesses beyond web hosts and ISPs – looking to have a centralized location for managing multiple areas of their business. From websites to email, billing to server provisioning, the Parallels Operations Automation and Parallels Billing Automation platforms offer a centralized location for virtually any aspect of a business. As such, having a provisioning module for one of the leaders in small business email is a must.

The goal of the SmarterMail APS package was to provide a means of easily managing domains, mailboxes, mailings lists and aliases. To those ends, services provided include:

Domain Services
- Add / Remove Domains
- Add / Edit / Remove Domain Aliases
- Add / Edit / Remove User Aliases
- Domain Disk Space Reporting
Mailbox Services
- Add / Edit / Remove Mailboxes
- Configure Email Forwarding Settings
- Configure Auto-responder Settings
Mail List Services
- Add / Edit / Remove Mailing Lists
- Add / Edit / Remove Mailing List Subscribers

More information on the SmarterTrack module can be found on the Parallels APS Package for SmarterMail page of the SmarterMail help document.

SmarterMail and WebsitePanel

Formerly known as DotNetPanel, WebsitePanel has quickly become one of the best control panels for cloud computing companies and IT providers to automate the provisioning of a full suite of services on Windows servers. As such, SmarterMail is a perfect complement to WebsitePanel for hosting providers and ISPs.

The SmarterMail module provides the following services:

Create, remove and manage:
- domains
- users/mailboxes
- mailing lists
- user aliases
User settings that can be modified include:

mailbox size
passwords
the ability to set domain admins
manage autoresponders
manage mail forwarding

Advanced mailbox/user and server settings are managed from within SmarterMail based on domain admin and/or system admin logins.

More information on the SmarterMail module can be found on the WebsitePanel Module for SmarterMail page of the SmarterMail help document.

SmarterStats and WebsitePanel

The SmarterStats integration module for WebsitePanel follows the SmarterMail module and provides industry-leading log analytics, SEO optimization and website tuning tools to domain administrators and website owners alike.

The SmarterStats module provides the following services:

Site and user creation
The ability to link directly to SmarterStats for viewing reports on a per-user basis
Advances site, user and server settings are managed from within SmarterStats based on domain admin and/or system admin logins.

As the module implementations are almost identical, more information on the SmarterStats module can be found on the WebsitePanel Module for SmarterMail page of the SmarterMail help document.

Filed under SmarterTools

SmarterMail 11.x BETA Now Available

January 24, 2013 by ST-DCurtis 1 Comment

We’re excited to announce the BETA of the next version of our popular Windows mail server: SmarterMail 11.x. Over the last few major releases we focused on providing an incredibly powerful and user friendly Web interface that users would enjoy. With this latest release, we kept the same look and appearance but rewrote the underlying architecture with the latest Internet technologies to dramatically improve the speed, reduce the size and increase compatibility with all the latest Internet browsers and tablets.

In addition, SmarterMail 11.x brings several new features, server side optimizations and fixes that continues to make SmarterMail compatible with the latest Internet trends. As with all releases, we worked closely with customers and partners and while we couldn’t incorporate everyone’s ideas into this release, we prioritized our users’ wants to create a new version of SmarterMail that we think you’ll really like.

So let’s take a look at what’s new…

Tremendous Performance Increases

We spent a great deal of time benchmarking SmarterMail and then making changes to increase the level of performance across the board. In many instances we’ve seen increases of 70% or more in the speed and responsiveness of the SmarterMail 11.x interface. We’ve also seen huge decreases in memory and CPU usage, even under extremely heavy loads. All of this means that the product runs much quicker and much more efficiently than previous versions. Some of the changes we’ve made include:

Re-factored and completely re-wrote many areas of the web interface to reduce the amount of JavaScript code, CSS and HTML, making the entire web interface much faster, much more responsive and much lighter weight.
CSS files have been converted to LESS, making stylesheets much smaller and more efficient.
The button bars were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
The context menus were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
The date pickers were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
The tree view controls were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
Greatly increased the performance of the Web interface.
Replaced the message editor control with a more lightweight control.
SmarterMail Service memory has been drastically reduced using SpamAssasin.

As we mentioned in a blog post late last year, we feel efficiency IS a product feature, and SmarterMail 11.x really proves that point.

Simple Customization of the Webmail Interface

personalization SmarterMail 11.x introduces a much simpler way for users to customize the look and feel of their webmail experience. Now, rather than having to access system files to create custom styles, users can simply override existing SmarterMail styles with their own variables or, more simply, by modifying the overall color scheme of the primary, secondary and hyperlink colors. Users can even drastically revise the look of the webmail interface. For example, by moving the navigation icons to a horizontal position versus their default vertical position. Of course, if the Domain Admin prefers the defaults, customization at the user level can be disabled, thereby preserving branding and corporate identity.

Significant Improvements to Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync

Note-2-Calendar_sm Customers using the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) add-on enjoy the industry standard in syncing technologies for all mobile devices and will be ready for the next version of Microsoft Outlook for Windows that’s coming in Office 2013. With SmarterMail 11.x we’ve made some significant changes in how SmarterMail integrates EAS, including better handling of the most popular devices from Samsung, the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, and seamless integration with their native email clients.

Changes to how SmarterTools products work with add-ons are often only available with major upgrades due to the agreements we have with our vendors and partners. Customers who stay current with Upgrade Protection are able to take full advantage of these changes and modifications, not to mention receive full version upgrades at no additional cost. In addition, with SmarterTools, you can reinstate your Upgrade Protection at any time and still receive a discount. And unlike our competitors, SmarterTools doesn’t force customers to purchase each incremental upgrade that’s available when reinstating Upgrade Protection.

IPv6 Now Available

With the dwindling availability of IPv4 addresses, more and more hosting companies and service providers are moving towards utilizing IPv6 addresses. In addition, there will come a point where businesses of all shapes and sizes need to begin using IPv6 addresses as well. SmarterMail 11.x is here to help ease that transition. In fact, implementation of IPv6 with SmarterMail 11.x is just as simple as IPv4 – there’s no learning curve, no hassles and essentially the same functionality is available for IPv6 addresses as for legacy IPs. End users won’t even be able to tell the difference!

Greater Calendar Control

new_calendar In SmarterMail 10.x we greatly increased the functionality of our calendaring, and with SmarterMail 11.x we’re continuing that trend. In this latest version, users can not only set the default view for their calendars in the Web interface (either daily, weekly, monthly or all appointment views) but users can also automatically clean out old calendar entries. Domain or System Administrators can also default the auto-clean feature for calendars, making it an ideal solution for those admins who want to keep their mail servers manageable and running as smoothly as possible.

spell_checker

Improved Spell Checking

No one likes to send emails with spelling errors. With SmarterMail 11.x we completely revised how spell checking works, greatly increasing the accuracy and adding in grammar support. In addition, the new spell checking ignores things like URLs and email addresses and users can select an option to force spell checking before their email is actually sent, which should help with those awkward misspellings and grammar mistakes. You can also add your own words to your own dictionary to further customize and simplify your communications.

contact_pictures

Personalize Your Contacts

With the growth in popularity of social networks, people are used to see whom they’re talking to when typing up messages. SmarterMail 11.x allows users to add pictures to their contacts, thereby putting a face to a name, as it were, when typing up emails or using the included live chat. Contact pictures will even carry over to third-party live chat clients like Adium or Pidgin so users always see the person they’re communicating with, regardless of medium. In addition, ActiveSync and CardDAV will synchronize contacts with your choice of Third-party applications.

New Features for System Administrators

As if the incredible performance increases won’t make their jobs easier enough, we’ve also included several new features, tools and improvements for System Administrators. Some of these include the ability to utilize an abuse detection rule that allows blocking of IP addresses that exceed a set number of authentication failures over a variety of protocols, the ability to delete IP address that no longer exist right from the IP address bindings page and the implementation of the UIDPlus extension for IMAP. System administrators can even search log files written to the MRS\App_Data\Logs folder from within the management interface and much more.

17 Different Spell-check Dictionaries Included

In addition to the improved spell checking, SmarterMail also includes dictionaries for 17 different languages. The languages supported include:

English (US+UK Combined) – DEFAULT
English (US), (Australia), (Canada), (UK)
French
German/German (Switzerland)
Greek
Hungarian
Italian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese/Portuguese (Brazil)
Russian
Spanish

Greater Support for International Customers

SmarterMail is a truly international product. With customers in well over 120 different countries, support for languages other than English is a priority. In addition, as SmarterMail’s adoption across the globe continues to rise, support for non-Western character sets is also essential. With SmarterMail 11.x we’ve not only included support for right-to-left languages in our Web interface, but we’ve also gone through the entire product and greatly simplified our language strings to make things much easier for automated translations and for customers who create their own translation files.

Is that it?

Of course not! SmarterMail 11.x has many more features and improvements. You’ll find them in the release notes we’ll post in the SmarterMail 11.x BETA forum, but here are a few more that might be of interest:

A new content filter action was added for flagging messages and setting their priority.
Print preview now includes a list of attachments, perfect for regulatory compliance.
Users can now set start dates and end dates for their auto-responders.
Status messages and tip text now drops down from the top of the page and no longer disrupts page flow.
Language strings have been simplified so that they are much easier to translate.
In the webmail interface, the message grid now adds a color to the subject of unread messages to better distinguish them from messages that have already been read.
The ability for SmarterMail to detect missing attachments when they should be present. For example, when a message contains the word “attachment” but no files are attached or the subject is empty.

Getting started with the BETA

To get your hands on the BETA simply visit the SmarterTools BETA release forum, where you’ll see how to:

Sign up for the BETA
Get a special BETA license key
Download the latest BETA release (we update it regularly)
Communicate with other BETA testers and the SmarterTools development team
Stay up-to-date on the latest release note and BETA news

Filed under SmarterMail, SmarterTools Tagged with BETA, email, email security, email server, Exchange ActiveSync, iOS, ipad, iPhone, Microsoft Exchange, mobile computing, new features, SmarterMail, Web hosting, Windows

SmarterTrack 9.x BETA Now Available

January 24, 2013 by ST-DCurtis 2 Comments

We’re excited to announce the BETA of the next version of our popular help desk: SmarterTrack 9.x. Over the last few major releases we focused on providing a Web interface for SmarterTrack that agents, managers, administrators and end users would find as simple as it was powerful. With this latest release, we kept the same look and appearance but rewrote the underlying architecture with the latest Internet technologies to dramatically improve the speed, reduce the size and increase compatibility with all the latest Internet browsers and tablets.

In addition, SmarterTrack 9.x brings several new features, server side optimizations and fixes that continues to make SmarterTrack compatible with the latest Internet trends. As with all releases, we worked closely with customers and partners and while we couldn’t incorporate everyone’s ideas into this release, we prioritized our users’ wants to create a new version of SmarterTrack that we think you’ll really like.

So let’s take a look at what’s new…