EHLO, Can I please send some mail already?

I saw the SMTP connector flapping (sporadic up-and-down status) on an Exchange bridgehead the other day, and decided a transactional monitor of sorts for the SMTP conversation between bridgehead and the SMTP gateway (non-Windows appliance) was a good step to catch the culprit in the act, as we couldn't see any network connectivity issues in the way. So, one of my team wrote a nice MOM script you might want to check out. It uses an open source COM object from articlelabs.com and allows us to · use a socket function to open a connection on port 25, · actually pass a command to the remote SMTP host (I send a EHLO generally) · and then parse the output for the expected 250 hello response. Note, you can actually query for the entire 250 response string, and seems to be pretty accurate. Parameters: Host A single host NetBIOS, FQDN and IP okay Command Send a command to the SMTP service on the server. If this command is left blank, then a simple port will run instead. SearchString A search string will be used when a command is sent to the STMP server, otherwise this is ignored. LogSuccessEvent 1 - log successful events 0 - logs failure events Get a copy this SMTP Health Monitor script for MOM HERE.