System Capacity – Workqueue

The Workqueue page shows the average time a message spends in the work queue, excluding any time spent in the Spam quarantine or in a policy, virus, or outbreak quarantine. You can view time periods from an hour up to one month. This average can help in identifying both short term events delaying mail delivery and identify long term trends in the workload on the system.

Note
If a message is released from the quarantine into the work queue, the “average time in work queue” metric ignores this time. This prevents double-counting and distorted statistics due to extended time spent in a quarantine.

The report also shows the volume of messages in the work queue over a specified time period, and it shows the maximum messages in the work queue over the same time period. The graphical representation of the maximum messages in the work queue also shows the work queue threshold level.

Occasional spikes in the Workqueue graphs are normal and expected. If the messages in the work queue remain higher than the configured threshold for a long duration, this may indicate a capacity issue. In this scenario, consider tuning the threshold level or review the system configuration.

To change the work queue threshold level, see Adjusting the Reference Threshold in System Health Graphs for Email Security Appliances.

Tip

When reviewing the work queue page, you may want to measure the frequency of work queue backups, and take note of work queue backups that exceed 10,000 messages.