How to increase the number of scanning processes in Forefront Security for Exchange Server

This article describes how to increase the number of scanning processes in Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server.

Forefront Security supports multiple scanning processes

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

How 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 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 Forefront Server Security Administrator.
9. In the Services snap-in, restart the FSCController service.