We would be interrested to know if someone else has the issue too.

 

I was preparing the update to 6754, to maybe finally fix the problems our customers are having with shared calendars (we're running 6744 and are receiving quite a lot of complaints about this).

 

But I'm not sure anymore now if it's a good idea to update.

 

 

With SmarterMail v16.3.6733 last week we noticed SmarterMail performance issues. We have around 50 users syncing with eMClient by EWS-protocol (and around 50 ExchangeActiveSync and 50 by IMAP) and we noticed "IIS worker process" consumed hight CPU!

ReleaseNotes for v16.3.6751 stated:
Fixed: EWS was causing IIS Worker Process to consume CPU.
Running this version we still noticed issues concerning overall performance, sometimes our Mailserver was almost not reacting anymore for any sync-processing.... added a second vCPU (as advised by SmarterTools) - but still very worse performance issues - and our employeees are complaining over and over - they cannot access their emails anymore.

On Saturday we noticed the next SmarterMail Update v16.3.6754:
again including EWS performance/syncing fixes

Now with v16.3.6754 it is better than in v16.3.6751 - but still not perfect like some SmarterMail versions before :-( Now we noticed sometimes very, very, very, very slow EWS-syncing-times.... over many minutes! That was not so dramatically in the past... looks like IIS worker process sometimes still increases CPU and memory-usage to a very high level! We notice issues during our main business hours, when more users are accessing our Mailserver at the same time. Outside our business hours it is difficult to reproduce/check or verify any update/fix!


We already have an email-support-ticket openend at SmarterTools since last Thursday - but not received reliable solution until now. Sorry, but right now the stability and reliability of SmarterMail-releases does not look very good at all for our Mailserver :-(

We've had quite a few users contact us regarding EWS being slower. Not a massive deal, but many have noticed something has changed quite a bit. Especially when you first open eM Client, it takes forever.

We are experiencing the very, verfy, very slow EWS-syncing of eMClient (could take almost up to 5 minutes until completed/spinning "wheels" of eMClient are stopping). 50EWS, 50EAS and 50 IMAP users are accessing SmarterMail-server.

The very slow syncing happens most times only during our business hours, where more users are accessing/checking their email-account at the same time or perhaps sending outgoing mail at similar times...- so I suppose it has to do with some or many connections/syncing-processes by EWS/eMClient. And IIS worker process CPU and memory usuage are sometimes increasing (somestimes even up to 99%).

It is difficult/almost impossible to re-produce this behavior outside our business-hours, for example right after installation of an update/custom build. So I always have to wait until next day and start of our business hours to monitor/see first results.
I already received custom build v16.3.6754.15924 with additional EWS-fixes but this version made it even more worse at all - at least at our SmarterMail mailserver :-( In addition to the very, very, very slow sync even other processes of the mailserver were malfunctioning and created additional complaints - so I went back to the release v16.3.6754 - with "just" the slow EWS/eMClient-sync-issues... and that is not killing our whole mailserver.

Due to 4th July/national holiday at SmarterTools I did not receive any update/new custom build yet... even today (the day after) not any further reaction/update at my support-ticket... at least I hope that they will give a status update with some advise before this upcoming weekend.

Sorry that I have to say this - but currently the reliablibity of SmarterMail as an "Enterprise" product is not given at all. I can understand that there are many possibilities what can go wrong.... but quality assurance ist really bad.... (or alomost not existent) If you just check the last few release notes you will notice, that there are many little fixes/issues mentioned.

I was always "fighting" for SmarterMail and not switching to Microsoft Exchange - but I am not sure how long I can stick to my opinion/decision. For example the issues in EWS are really bad - a supported/implemented protocol has to be stable and reliable. And the latest few release-versions/updates were often not really stable at all :-(

So I am already in fear what happens if SmarterTools will implement MAPI in v17.... and the way how the beta-updates of v17 are going (or currently not going anymore) it does not look really good.... I know this needs time. And even with MAPI-support we still need the EWS-protocol for syncing with eMClient (including calendars, contacts, notes etc.). And I can understand that almost no user is willing to install/test the v17 if the needed/requested MAPI is not implemented/included yet!

Let us hope and pray that SmarterTools will fix the EWS-protocol issues and create stable and reliable new SmarterMail-versions really soon (and release it after QA-testing!).