57 E-Mail Virus Scrubber

The E-Mail Virus Scrubber target is a background service that periodically selects and scans high-risk messages for virus intrusion with the presence of a supported third-party virus scanning engine. The selection criteria, also known as prescan filters, can be configured by the administrator. Provided for this target are metrics and gauges used to determine the availability, progress, and health of the Virus Scrubber services.

57.1 Messages

The Messages category contains the metrics that provide information about the progress and status of the virus scanning task.

57.1.1 Infected Message Discovery Rate (Infections Found/minute)

This metric measures the number of messages each minute that have been identified by the supported third-party scan engine to be virus infected. This is an informational metric only.

Metric Summary

The following table shows how often the metric's value is collected and compared against the default thresholds. The Consecutive Number of Occurrences Preceding Notification column indicates the consecutive number of times the comparison against thresholds should hold TRUE before an alert is generated.

Table 57-1 Metric Summary Table

Target Version Evaluation and Collection Frequency Upload Frequency Operator Default Warning Threshold' Default Critical Threshold Consecutive Number of Occurrences Preceding Notification Alert Text

All Versions

Every 60 Minutes

After Every Sample

>

1

10

1

Virus infected messages found: %value%


57.1.2 Infected Message Repair Rate (Repairs/minute)

This metric measures the number of infected messages each minute that have been identified, repaired, and restored to the original user's folders. This is an informational metric only.

Metric Summary

The following table shows how often the metric's value is collected.

Target Version Evaluation and Collection Frequency
All Versions Every 60 minutes

57.1.3 Message Pre-Scan Rate (Messages/minute)

This metric measures the number of messages selected each minute by the Virus Scrubber Server for virus scanning. This is an informational metric only.

Metric Summary

The following table shows how often the metric's value is collected.

Target Version Evaluation and Collection Frequency
All Versions Every 60 minutes

57.1.4 Message Scan Rate (Messages/minute)

This metric measures the number of messages submitted and scanned each minute by the supported third-party scan engine. This is an informational metric only.

Metric Summary

The following table shows how often the metric's value is collected.

Target Version Evaluation and Collection Frequency
All Versions Every 60 minutes

57.1.5 Number of Messages Pending Scan

This metric is a gauge displaying the number of messages that have been selected by the Virus Scrubber Service to be scanned for the supported third-party scanning engine. This metric value indicates how many messages have been removed from user folders but are yet to be scanned by the Virus Scrubber. A small and steady value is desirable at all times. A large value or a continuously growing value means that virus scanning by the supported third-party scan engine is not fast enough to keep up with the rate of messages being selected by the Virus Scrubber Server using the prescan filter. The larger the value gets, the longer that e-mail users will experience messages missing from their folders.

Metric Summary

The following table shows how often the metric's value is collected.

Target Version Evaluation and Collection Frequency
All Versions Every 60 minutes

User Action

When the metric value increases significantly and is not decreasing fast enough, perform the following:

  1. Check whether the third-party scan engine is configured correctly and efficiently and make sure the engine is working well. Consult your third-party scan engine vendor documentation for more information.

  2. Consider increasing the Virus Scrubber Service parameter "Concurrency Level" moderately to increase the scan rate. Refresh the server when any parameter value is changed.

  3. Consider choosing the option "Stepwise prescan" in the Virus Scrubber Server parameter settings. Refresh the server when any parameter value is changed.

57.2 Response

The Response category contains metrics that provide information about the Up/Down status of the Virus Scrubber service.

57.2.1 Status

The Status metric provides information about the Up/Down status of the Virus Scrubber service. The Virus Scrubber service shows a status of Down when all configured instances for this service are down. By default, the service is not started.

Metric Summary

The following table shows how often the metric's value is collected and compared against the default thresholds. The Consecutive Number of Occurrences Preceding Notification column indicates the consecutive number of times the comparison against thresholds should hold TRUE before an alert is generated.

Table 57-2 Metric Summary Table

Target Version Evaluation and Collection Frequency Upload Frequency Operator Default Warning Threshold' Default Critical Threshold Consecutive Number of Occurrences Preceding Notification Alert Text

All Versions

Every 5 Minutes

After Every Sample

=

0

Not Defined

1

E-Mail Virus Scrubber not running


User Action

A response status failure means the Virus Scrubber Server is not running. A server that is not running will not be able to perform virus scanning on existing e-mail messages. You can start the Virus Scrubber Service by selecting the Virus Scrubber Service target and clicking on the Start button on the Email Application home page. To investigate why the service is down, check for alerts that may have been generated by the Virus Scrubber service, specific instances of the Virus Scrubber ervice, and the Oracle Email application that this Virus Scrubber Service is a member of. Also, perform the following checks:

  1. Check the OPMN log files

  2. Log file content for any errors. Correct any error condition that might have occurred.

  3. Restart the service.