A little help with setting up e-mail notifications please

[BobMc]

Hi guys,

Im following this Symantec guide here - http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH186581

For point 6, I dont understand who I am putting as the sender? the example says 'Administrator', but what exactly am I supposed to put here? Can anybody help?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[lmosla]

Hi, This would be the mailbox associated with the Backup Exec account. http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH184449

Thanks

[Mai_Ali]

For Point 6: Sender, you will create new mailbox account and assign it to Backup Exec by entering this user crendential to send notification mails from it all notification to Recipient.

[BobMc]

Thanks for the replies :)

The admin account which Backup Exec 2012 runs under does not have an e-mail account. Is there any option to use SMTP relay?

Kind regards,

[VJware]

Per this KB - http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO73511

It doesn't seem to be necessary to add the Backup Exec Admin's email account. Verbatim from above KB ~

Email notification requires an email account to be used as the sender. For example, you might want to use an email account for the backup administrator or the IT administrator.

[Mai_Ali]

Yes, you can as hint in this article for use Google email servers as the SMTP relay

Note for using Google Apps

To use Google email servers as the SMTP relay, follow the instructions located at Google Apps Documentation & Support http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=176600. A SPF record will need configured for the domain with the IP address of the device or application to ensure that recipients do not reject mail sent from it.

[BobMc]

Hi,

I dont understand what you mean exactly? You say it seems that you might not need at add a senders e-mail account?

Do you mean I might be able to put my own e-mail address in there and have it sent from that even though BUE doesn't run under my account?

[VJware]

Sender's email address is required, but it doesn't seem necessary to enter the BE Admin's. I guess, you could use any email address which is part of your domain.
 

[Colin_Weaver]

In the past (using internal e-mail servers with anonymouse SMTP and only alerting internal e-mail addresses) you could definitely make up that e-mail address and sender name (with no real mailbox behind it) as it only becames important if the recipient of the alert might want to reply - and how often do backup admins ever reply to an automated alert (should be never)

If however you wanted to send to an external e-mail address (someone working for your managed service provider for instance) then you had to use valid addresses and sender names as Open Relay blocks would typically stop it otherwise. (Although you could get around this by using an Alias mailbox internally instead) 

Things have moved on a bit though with companies now using external mail servers and/or authenticted SMTP - This will need a valid account although it does not have to be related to the Backup Exec service accounts, the person configuring just has to know the correct password etc.

So really what you need to enter depends more on your mail environment (and the recipient e-mail addresses for the alerts) than on Backup Exec.

EDIT: Just a bit more info, the "sender" in this option is a direct reference to the details used in the "mail from" command mentioned in this Microsoft KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323350

[Artegic]

You can use whichever address you want as the sender address, subject to following restrictions/caveats:

• It should of course be syntactically valid. (Exactly one @ sign and so on...)
• What you put there will appear as the sender address in notification mails, so it should be something recognizable to the recipient.
• Non-delivery reports (aka bounces) for and replies (if any) to notifications will go to that address, so you'll want that address to exist and go to someone who can do something about it.
• The mailserver(s) through which the notifications are sent may put restrictions on sender addresses. A company mailserver may for example insist that mails sent from machines within the company network have sender addresses belonging to the company domain. ISP mailservers often enforce SPF. So it's probably best to use a legitimate local address of your organization/network.

HTH,
Tilman