Share via

How to Increase the Number of Scanning Processes in Forefront Security for Exchange Server

  • Article

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will reach end of support on April 11, 2017. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

 

This topic explains how to use the Forefront Server Security Administrator tool to increase the number of scanning processes in Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server.

Before You Begin

To perform this procedure, the account you use must be delegated the following:

  • Local Administrator rights

For more information about permissions, delegating roles, and the rights that are required to administer Exchange Server 2007, see Permission Considerations.

Procedure

To use the Forefront Server Security tool to increase the number of scanning processes

  1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Forefront Server Security, point to Exchange Server, and then click Forefront Server Security Administrator.

  2. In the What server you want to connect to box, click the appropriate Exchange server. Or, click Browse, and then locate the server that you want.

  3. Click OK.

  4. In the Shuttle Navigator, click Settings, and then click General Options.

  5. In the Scanning area, click a suitable value in the Transport Process Count box. The maximum value that you can use is 10.

  6. In the Realtime Process Count box, click a suitable value. The maximum value that you can use is 10.

  7. Click Save.

  8. Exit the Forefront Server Security Administrator tool.

  9. Restart the FSCController service.

For More Information

Multiple Scanning Processes

In Exchange Server 2007, Forefront Security supports multiple scanning processes for real-time scanning and for the transport scan process. The transport scan process also scans e-mail messages on the SMTP virtual servers. When you increase the number of scanning processes for the real-time scanner, you may help prevent the following issues:

  • Issues in which Microsoft Outlook client computers stop responding

  • Message queuing issues

When you increase the number of scanning processes for the transport scanner, you may help prevent messages from building up in the transport queues.

Process Count Registry Entries

The following registry entries control the number of scanning processes that run on the Exchange server:

  • RealtimeProcessCount: This registry entry controls the number of real-time scanning processes.

  • InternetProcessCount: This registry entry controls the number of transport scanning processes.

When you start the Forefront service for the first time, these registry entries are created under the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow643Node\Microsoft\Forefront Server Security\Exchange Server

The default value of each of these registry entries is 4. By default, four processes are run on the Exchange Mailbox server.