Slow cfmail spooling and cfadministrator

Thanks for your replies

WolfShade​. We've selecting the option without spooling and it's faster, but it's not the solution we're after. We definitely need to spool the emails to keep a decent user experience when multiple emails are fired.

Dave Watts​. You mention that the Standard version is intentionally slower than Enterprise. I've seen the tests done on ColdFusionMuse for CF11, but have you any other data for this?

Our tests today and the logs shown in HMailServer suggest there's exactly a 9 second delay between

"SENT: 220 mail.mailnameserver.com ESMTP"

and the

"RECEIVED: EHLO serverid" messages.

This could work out to be throttled to 400 emails an hour... Does this correlate with your experience?

Charlie Arehart​. Thanks for the link. We installed CF18 as a developer edition, installed Update 1 and then tested the server before buying the license, so we've not actually used the server without the update. We've checked the update log file (as mentioned) and there were

1417 Successes

0 Warnings

0 NonFatalErrors

0 FatalErrors

We've done a lot of testing on this today, checked the firewall and anti-virus (temporarily disabling scanning on the CF folders) and found no improvements.

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We're lucky to be able to try our old server alongside the new one - CF11 vs CF18. Both running standard versions of CF and HMailServer for SMTP, both set with a Spool Interval of 15 seconds.

- On the new server running CF18 in CF Administrator, switching from the new mailserver details (127.0.0.1) to the old mailserver (old IP) works in exactly the same way as the new mailserver. It spools the emails virtually instantly, but then takes one from the spool folder every 15 seconds. When you watch the logs in HMailServer, the time from when it starts to send the email to having finished sending it is always 9 seconds.

- On the old server running CF11, in CF Administrator, switching TO the new mailserver details works as we think it should. It spools the emails virtually instantly, and then when the spool interval is reached it sends a good chunk of emails (25+ tested) - if not all - in one go.

This last test for us ruled out any problems within HMailServer, antivirus or the firewall and we believe that there is now a speed limit/spool throttling that has been added in after CF11.

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Does anyone have any additional information that would help improve the spool speed? Or other options for firing emails from ColdFusion?

As it stands we're going to have to consider recoding our emails in something other than ColdFusion.

I did a lot of testing on the ColdFusion Mail Spool processing speeds for Standard and Enterprise editions and reported those results here.  https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2017/11/coldfusion-mailspoolservice-performance/

Stuart, there can be many explanations  but let's start with your last point: it's possible you had an error during the one update you've applied. For more on investigating that, see me post:

https://www.carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2016/9/6/solve_common_problems_with_CF_updates_in_10_and_above

Indeed, has the mail spool lag been since that update? Even if not, do check that log I point to, for the admin issue.

Finally, as for other possible explanations of the slow mail send issue, that could be caused by an anti-virus or firewall issue  Check that out.

(And if you may prefer direct help with these things--with satisfaction guaranteed or you won't pay, I can help remotely via screensharing. More at the consulting page at carehart.org.)

1) I'm not sure this is an actual problem. Mail deliver is not supposed to be instantaneous. And it is intentionally slower with Standard than with Enterprise. Enterprise includes a much more robust mail engine, to deliver a larger volume of mail. But if you're saying you send 150 emails per hour with a delay of 10 seconds per email, and assuming that each email is handled serially - which generally is not the case - you're looking at a 15 minute delay for the last email in the chain. That's well within the boundaries of acceptability for email delivery. It takes me more than that when I make a payment to my bank most of the time.

I would recommend against disabling the spool, as you'll really have no way to handle mail disconnection issues.

2) There is probably a bug with the CF Admin. The value that matters is what's in neo-mail.xml after a service restart. If that's true, then you're all set.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

The only thing that I can think of is to add an attribute to the CFMAIL tag:  spoolenable="no".  This should send the mail immediately, avoiding the spooling.

HTH,

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