Large number of messages in Queue because of DNS error

Catherine Jaszewski 716 Reputation points
2021-03-31T14:39:37.41+00:00

I have an exchange Mailbox Server, Alt-EXCH, that has a high number of messages in both the Journal Queue (30000) and the Mailbox Queue(8000). I believe the counts are high because of all the retries. And I found that the messages were not delivering because of a incorrectly configured network adapter. (i.e. the Secondary DNS was not configured properly for the TCPIP Static IP). The Secondary DNS ip has been corrected.

There is a second exchange Mailbox server, Primary-EXCH, that has been up and running for over two months with no issues.

The Alt-EXCH server was initially up for about an 1.5hours when the issue was noticed and then shut down. It was brought up twice more for no more then an hour at a time for troubleshooting purposes. So I cannot imagine a whole lot of email getting stuck in the queues.

Now that the DNS issue has been resolved I would like to fire up the ALT-EXCH server and let the Queues go through the delivery process. Is there any foreseeable issue with this action plan? Is there a better way to do this?

Please note - there are no DAGs involved on these servers.

Please advise.

Thank you

Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server: A family of Microsoft client/server messaging and collaboration software.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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Accepted answer
  1. Andy David - MVP 115.3K Reputation points MVP
    2021-03-31T14:57:44.377+00:00

    You got to clear those queues, so if things are fixed bring it up and let it rip.
    That amount is actually not that large, just give it time to clear.

    1 person found this answer helpful.

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  1. Eric Yin-MSFT 4,446 Reputation points
    2021-04-01T02:45:12.607+00:00

    Hi,
    The server might be slow due to system resource being used.
    When a system resource utilization level on the Exchange server is determined to be too high, the server delays accepting new messages. That's Back pressure feature, see more information here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mail-flow/back-pressure?view=exchserver-2019#back-pressure-logging-information
    If you want to delete the messages in queues manually (can't remove messages from the Submission queue), you can use command remove-message, here is an example: 

    Get-Queue | Get-Message -ResultSize unlimited | where {$_.Subject -like "*Undeliverable*"} | Remove-Message -WithNDR $False

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