Observability Metrics - SEG

Observability Metrics for Secure Email Gateway provide real-time insight into inbound and outbound email processing, filtering behavior, and delivery performance.

📌 Observability Metrics overview
This tutorial describes how to set up Observability Metrics and how to integrate them into your observability platform. For a general explanation of Observability Metrics, including data format and access model, refer to Observability Metrics Overview.

Setup overview

Setting up Observability Metrics for Secure Email Gateway consists of three steps.

Step 1: Book the Observability Metrics add-on

Contact your Retarus sales representative to order the add-on and update your contract.

Step 2: Retarus prepares your setup

The Retarus Operations team sets up your dedicated Observability instance and endpoint.

Step 3: Receive credentials and endpoint

Retarus provides you with the credentials and the specific API endpoint for your Observability instance.

Endpoint and authentication

Endpoint

https://api.retarus.com/stable/retarus/metrics/1.0/[your_customer_number]

Authentication

Access requires Basic authentication.

Requirements

Host
You must run a Prometheus server in your environment.
Connectivity
Your system must be able to reach the Retarus Observability Metrics endpoint over a public HTTPS connection.
Configuration
Your prometheus.yml configuration file must include a remote_read section.
Scrape interval
Observability Metrics use a pull-based model. You define the scrape interval in your Prometheus configuration. The minimum supported scrape interval is 1 minute. Shorter intervals do not provide fresher data.

Available metrics

Secure Email Gateway exposes the following metrics for email processing and security filtering:

Metric name	Type	Description
`rmxtracking_inbound_mail` `_count_total`	Counter	Total number of inbound mails in the whole system.
`rmxtracking_outbound_mail` `_count_total`	Counter	Total number of outbound mails in the whole system.
`rmxtracking_inbound_mail` `_duration_seconds_sum`	Summary	Sum of the processing times that inbound mails took in the system (only when they are actually sent to you).
`rmxtracking_inbound_mail` `_duration_seconds_count`	Counter	Total number of inbound mails that are actually sent to you.
`rmxtracking_outbound` `_mail_duration_seconds_sum`	Summary	Sum of the processing times that outbound mails took in the system (only when they are actually sent to the internet).
`rmxtracking_outbound_mail` `_duration_seconds_count`	Counter	Total number of outbound mails that are actually sent to the internet.

Metrics labels

Secure Email Gateway metrics include the following labels:

Name	Type	Description	Values / Examples
`datacenter`	Enum	Indicates which Retarus datacenter processed the message.	DE1 (Frankfurt), DE2 (Munich)
`event_phase`	Enum	Shows the phase in which the message reached its final processing status.	FILTER (email analysis), DELIVER (Postfix delivery)
`status`	Enum	Status of the email.	OK, ERROR, REJECT, QUARANTINE
`status_code`	Integer	Status code corresponding to status and substatus.	e.g. 200, 500, 505
`substatus`	Enum	Substatus of the email.	e.g. DirFilter, DNS, Virus, SenderRestriction, SpamProbabilityLimit, NDR Spam, AntiSpam, Phishing, Blocklist, Attachment-Type

Usage

Use the provided endpoint (compatible with Prometheus) to retrieve metrics data. You can filter metrics, create dashboards, define alert thresholds, and analyze inbound and outbound traffic patterns within your observability platform. You control how long metrics are retained in your own environment.