Folks, We have had a few reports of email delivery delays and
client connection problems to the smtp servers. There are a couple of
things that have happened that may be causing each of these.
Over the
weekend, one of our Barracuda devices died and that left just one Barracuda
handling incoming email addressed to @utk.edu and @tennessee.edu
addresses. Additionally, one of our legacy smtp servers,
cheetah.mail.utk.edu, failed. The Barracuda vendor was contacted
first thing Monday morning and a replacement unit was to be sent
overnight.
We had hoped that the remaining Barracuda could
handle the incoming email load but the load on the remaining Barracuda became
very high and it was not able to handle the incoming email. We decided to
add our legacy smtp servers back to the incoming round robin. They also
saw a very high load and struggled to keep up. This has made it difficult,
at times, for clients to make connections to the smtp servers for mail
submission.
As of this writing, cheetah.mail.utk.edu is back in
production and the replacement Barracuda is being configured (by the vendor) and
should be back in production soon. Once it is working properly, the legacy
smtp servers will be removed from the incoming round robin and should be able to
respond to client connections in a more timely fashion.
Thanks for your
continued patience as we work through these issues.
lj
--
Larry Jennings
IT Manager - NT & Unix Systems Group
University of Tennessee
Office of Information Technology
Phone: 865.974.6555
Email: ljenning@utk.edu