How do I change the alert notification frequency?

[Jamie_Edwards]

Hello,

Does anyone know how to change the alert notification frequency. On one server, it emails me every 15 minutes for "Media Insert" alerts. On a second server it emails me the "Media Insert" alert EVERY MINUTE. That is really annoying. Both servers are running v10. Since there are two different alert frequencies, there has to be a setting somewhere. Do anyone know where to change this?

Thanks,

Jamie

[Renuka_-]

Hello,

Please check figure 5 in the following technote:


Title : How to configure backup jobs to send notification using Backup Exec 9.x and 10.0 (includes SMTP configuration)

http://support.veritas.com/docs/253178

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[Jamie_Edwards]

Hello,

There is no step 5. There are steps 1-3, then then steps 1-2. Either way, nothing in that technote answers my question.

Jamie

[Dave_Bunye]

Alerts are sent when the job is generating the issue, so each job on each server needs to be checked. Since one sends every minute, are you sure there aren't a few jobs asking for media? Each job should send the media alert only once, not repeatedly. Now, you may have set up Error Handling rules to auto answer the alert, which would explain the every minute email issue since every time the error handling answered OK to the alert, the job would then send another alert since the new media was not inserted.

You can also you the "circuit breaker" feature for notificatiosn so you are not bombarded with emails. Verifyt he above issue first of course since this fix will limit your notifications. On your recipient properties page, you will see the section titled "Limit the number of notifications sent" This is the circuit breaker feature, since once x number of alerts are received, it shuts done notifications to that recipient for x amount of time. (like a power circuit shutting down after a surge until it is reset)

The Maximum number of times in within x amount of minutes is a moving window, so it deals with X amount of time, regardless of exact minutes alerts are received. IE: you receive an alert at 9:00am, and 4 more at 9:06am. If you had a max of 5 alerts in a 5 minute window, this would not shut your notifications down. However, if you receive another alert at 9:10am, your alert notifications would be suspended since you have 5 alerts in the time window (9:06a - 9:11a) Notifications would turn back on for your recipient when you "Reset time value is reached, ie 15 minutes later. Generally, the 5/5/15 defaults are good, modify as needed.

[Jamie_Edwards]

There is only one job running on both backup servers. The "automated alert responses" in BEUtility are set to the same options on both servers: No, Yes or OK, Cancel, Yes or OK, in that order. The "Media Insert" options in "Alert Categories" are the same on both servers and the "automatically clear after" is not selected. Where else can I look?

And even if I find out how to fix the every minute server to only email me every 15 minutes, I still want to know where I change that to email me every hour instead of every 15 minutes.

Jamie

[Renuka_-]

Hello,


Have you read the technote that was given to you? Figure 5 in step 3 shows where to change the frequency of notifications sent. You need to alter the settings in the option: Limit the number of notifications sent.

It is also possible to set a specific schedule for the notifications sent in the same windows.


NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answeredand would be moved toanswered questions pool.

[Jamie_Edwards]

Yes, I did read it. And as I said before I want to change the alert frequency not suppress alerts. There is a fine but important difference. Let's say that I set a 5/5/15 for the "circuit breaker" feature today. Then tonight I forget to insert the backup tapes for tonight's backup. At 9:00PM my backup starts. The tape isn't in the drive, so it sends a media insert message at 9:00PM and then another 4 messages every minute after. So it's 9:05PM and I've tripped the circuit breaker and I won't receive anymore alerts till 9:20PM, 15 minutes later. So I drive in and put the tape in at 9:10. (Yes I live that close to work.) I leave to go home. At 9:15PM the backup exec service fails (which it has been doing to me lately) and BE tries to send me a job failed alert. Since job failure messages are only sent one time, I don't get the message because the circuit breaker is tripped and doesn't reset till 9:20PM. So now I don't know that the backup has failed and I won't know till I arrive in the morning and wonder why the backup tape didn't automatically eject.

So unless the "circuit breaker" is intelligent enough to suppress only repeated alerts and not new alerts then it's not a good solution. And I don't get that impression since it is set at the recipient level and not at the alert category level, so if I'm wrong let me know. Maybe I'm just worrying about nothing. But all of this still doesn't explain why my one server sends media insert messages every 15 minutes and one sends them every minute. Unless deynub is right and I have autoanswer on and just don't where to turn it off at. Setting a schedule doesn't do me any good either. Again that could potentially suppress important alerts. I don't want to miss alerts I just don't want to get repeated alerts every single minute or even every 15 minutes. I think a media insert message every hour is good enough.

Thanks for everyone's help so far. I do appreciate it!

Jamie

Ps. I just got to know. Did you go back edit your post to say figure 5 or am I just going crazy. I swear it said step 5, and I don't remember those tags being there either. :)

[Dave_Bunye]

No, the circuit breaker suppresses everything for the time period.

There is nothing to set for alert frequency, an alert is generated once everytime the job gets to that state, hence what I think is happening is the laert is being cleared and the job keeps repeating the same issue. Alerts in BE are sent one time for each condition, they are not repeated for any issue.

This technote deals with the auto answer and auto clearing combination, perhaps review this and the settings may resolve your issue. Ver 10 is towards the bottom, but it seems to be basically the same thing with an added option.

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/192055.htm

[Jamie_Edwards]

I double checked the settings for both of my backup servers. In BEUtillity both servers "Automated Alert Responses" are set to "Cancel" for the "Media Insert Alert".

In "Alert Categories" in the Main BE Console, for Media Insert "Automatically cleart alert after" is disabled on both servers.

Is that what I should have?

Media insert email notifications have always been sent repeatedly for me across different BE versions. It's only recently that one server started emailing me more often. I don't normally forget to insert tapes so I'm unsure when it started. I just know I wasn't too happy when I got over 600 emails to my cell phone that happened to be off the night I forgot the tape. And at two cents a text message, that's going to cost me.

[Dave_Bunye]

I can honestly say I never had an issue with so many notifications being sent.

Your settings sound right. SInce you are ssetting it to cancel, have you checked the Alerts tab to see if it is cancelling the job as well? If so, perhaps your Error Handling rules are triggering the cancelled job to be retried. BEutility has a setting for retrying jobs as well. It just seems that in your case somethign is making the job continuously restart and generate another alert.

[Jamie_Edwards]

No the job didn't get cancelled, it was still waiting there for me when I came in. And there was no indication in the job history that it was repeatedly cancelled. I get those job retry messages when the BE service fails, but I don't get them when I forget the tape and BE sends out the Media Insert alerts.

[Dave_Bunye]

Hmm, I will have to see if there is anything else that may cause this...

One long shot, have you restarted the BE services? Just in case the notification service is a bit out of whack... Tools\BE Services and then just restart all services.

[Jamie_Edwards]

Not since the error but only because I don't forget the tapes very often. I guess I could run a test backup and forget the tape, but as you said it's probably a long shot. I'm considering uninstall BE and reinstalling from scratch with the latest rev that just came out. Since upgrading to v10 I've been getting all kinds of new errors. I get "failed to backup the WMI" sporadicly, the be service fails sporadically, the every minute a alerts, and 3 other things that I or Veritas has found a fix for. Version 10 hasn't been very kind to me.

Jamie

[Jamie_Edwards]

Hey Deynub,

You were right there was an automated response, but it wasn't under "Media Insert". In trying to figure out why one server was different then the other, I remember having a problem with the "every minute" server when I upgraded to v10. It was hanging up at 99% because it was throwing out a "Remove Media" alert. It had never done this before under v7, v8, or v9. So I called TS and they had me set an auto response to the Media Remove alert. It would answer "Yes" after one minute. So I ran a little test. I setup a test backup job, left the drive empty and started the job. After a few seconds a Remove Media alert is generated. One minute later the auto response kicks in and the alert goes away. Instantly after that a Insert Media alert is generated and instantly goes away and is replaced by another Remove Media alert. You can see the alerts flash by on the screen. It then repeats itself. So I ran the same test on my "every 15 minute" server, and it never generates the Remove Media alert, it just sends a Insert Media alert which stays up on the screen. Then every 15 minutes the Insert Media alert is emailed out again. So I went back to the "every minute" server and cleared the auto response to the Remove Media and re-ran the test. Now it just generates a Remove Media alert and stays there.

So now I have three questions...

1. Why is one server generating these Remove Media alerts after upgrading to v10 and the other one doesn't?

2. How do I get it stop generating the Remove Media alerts?

3. I still want to know how to change the alert frequency for the Media Insert alert. Every 15 minutes is too frequent for me?

[Jamie_Edwards]

Ok, so I figured while I waited for an answer to my questions, I would just go ahead and not use the "Eject Media After Job Completes" option and just manually remove the tape. So I cleared that option, left the drive empty, and started my test backup. It still generates the Remove Media alert, which if I use auto response means I get a media insert message every minute. If I don't use the auto response I don't get emailed at all because the Remove Media alert triggers and just sits there and the Media Insert alert never comes up. So I'm stuck if I do and stuck if I don't.

I really need to figure out how to stop these Remove Media alerts. They must be able to be stopped because I never had them on my one server before v10 and I have never gotten them on my other server even after upgrading to v10.

What's going on Veritas?

[Dave_Bunye]

Hey Jamie, sorry for the delay checking here but I can only get on the boards when time permits. :)

Your problem is not alert notifications, it is error handling and media management. Since you see how the auto response changes the results of the alerts, you can see the problem is outside of the notification component. Alerts can only be generated when a job completes or when an enviornmental issue pops up. There is no frequency of alerts, an alert is only generated once for a job or problem. If the problem keeps being generated, you will keep getting alerts, but the problem you have stems from something other than alerts.

Error handling and media management are not areas I work with alot so I am probably not the best to resolve those with you. I would start a thread with those issues listed and see if one of the other people on the boards have seen this. Your current thread title may be scaring people off who never use notifications, but do in fact use Error Handling and such, just like I generally do not venture into error handling threads. :)

Hope that makes sense though. You need to find out what causes the alert condition. Notifications is working as it should, once for each time the condition is generated.

[Jamie_Edwards]

I agree that for one of my servers, the problem is not with alert notification but with error handling and media management.

However for the other server where I don't have any problems with getting Media Remove alerts, I still get emailed every 15 minutes for a Media Insert alert. That server doesn't have any autoresonses set. And this every 15 minutes for a Media Insert has been around for years. I have just lived with it in the past, but now that I get charged per email to my cell phone, I would like to fix it. Am I the only one who gets multiple emails for Media Insert alerts?

Jamie

[Amruta_Purandar]

Hello,

Please try the following.
Go to Tools > Alert Categories and uncheck the option "Send notifications to selected recipients" for the respective alert categories.

Additionally configure "Automatically clear alert after" which will prevent it from sending notifications.

Do revert with results.

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[Jamie_Edwards]

Ok, let me restate the question to clear up any confustion.

For the "Media Insert" alert I have it set to email me. That way when I forget to insert the backup tapes or have inserted the wrong tapes I get an email letting me know. When that message go unaswered it emails me again every 15 minutes. I would like to change that interval to every hour.

I do not want to "Go to Tools > Alert Categories and uncheck the option "Send notifications to selected recipients" for the respective alert categories." because I want to get the alert.

And I don't want to "Additionally configure "Automatically clear alert after" which will prevent it from sending notifications." because again I want the message I just don't want it every 15 minutes.

Thanks for all the help,
Jamie

[Deepali_Badave]

Hello,

Thank you for elaborating the query again.

As you have mentioned here for the "Media Insert" alert you ahve set it to email you.So that you get an email whenever it is necessary to inser the media.And when that message goes unanswered it emails you again every 15 minutes because it is a default time set in the Backup Exec as "Reset the notification limit afer 15 min.

So you can chage it to an hour as you wish.

To achive this you can follow the steps given below:-
1.Go to Tools- Assign recepients to alert categories

2.In the Alert categories select Medi ainser alert

3.Click on New in the Recepients block

4.Select the Recepient as Person and then click Ok.

5.Selct SMTP email in it's Properties

6.Check th eenable option

7.Check th Enable option in the "Limit the number of Notifications sent"

8.check th eoption as "Reset the notification limit after" and specify the time as per your requirement.

And verify the result.

We hope this will help you.
Please update us on this issue.

Additional Information :
For information on the recent VERITAS Backup Exec security vulnerabilities, including links to the downloads for the necessary hotfixes, please refer to the following document:
Patch summary for Security Advisories VX05-001, VX05-002, VX05-003, VX05-005, VX05-006, VX05-007

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/277429.htm


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