Limit email notifications to success or fail

[PCJunky]

We've in the process of migrating our client base to Symantec BE SR 2010 from Acronis (...there lies a tale of woe), as part of the services we provide we monitor backups and have the backup software email us with the results of the nightly backup.

All we want is an email that states that the backup succeded (possibly with errors) or failed (as in completly failed to backup), so just one email form each installation of Symantec BE SR, currently were not monitoring that many sites with Symantec but already this amounts to over 150 emails a day from symantec alone where Acronis would have been a fraction of that!

We've played around with the settings but cant seem to distil this down to a simple pass or fail, as were new to the product I'm hoping its user error.

Can anyone point us in the right direct as to what email notification settings we should be using?

[Markus_Koestler]

Try the options available under Options->smtp e-mail in the console.

[Sush---]

Please follow this technotes to perform the required task

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO12070 : Configuring SMTP email or mobile phone text messaging for a person recipient

In the above technote check the table and check the following 2 points for configuration:

Notify me a maximum of x times within x minutes	Type the total number of notifications you want sent to the recipient for all alerts generated within the specified number of minutes. After the specified number of notifications have been sent, additional notifications are not sent until the specified minutes have been reached. The maximum number of minutes that can be set is 1440, which is the number of minutes in a day.
Reset the notification limits after x minutes	Select this check box to enter the number of minutes that must be reached before the notification limits are reset. When the time limit has been reached, the number of notifications sent is reset to zero

Also follow the below technote and select the Email Notification option only for JOB SUCCESS and JOB FAILED in the Alert Categories.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH29406 : How to configure notification recipients in Backup Exec 12.0 and above

Thanks,

-Sush...

[PCJunky]

Thanks for the quick responces, unfortunatly I think you are refering to Symantec BE 12 which has far more options that Symantec BE System Recovery 2010.

I have included a screen shot the email notification options screen and what we currently have it set to, the following setting result in a minimum of 3 emails, 1 to say it started, 1 for each partition backed up, and then 1 for each historical backup groomed to comply with the defined number of historical backups:

On a typical server with a boot partiton and a data partiton, and probably a hidden partiton, this will result in at least 7 emails of which only two are relevent.

I can live with one email per partition but could really do with loosing the rest, is there anyway to do this?

Thanks

[criley]

PCJunky,

Based on the above screenshot, you should only by receiving error messages but it seems you are receiving 'informational' messages (as well as errors?). This does not sound right to me.

A successful backup notification is classed as 'information' so based on what you have said you need, you would need to include both 'Errors' and 'Information'.

What you have described sounds like part defect and part enhancement request. Can you confirm the build of BESR you are using (check in Help/About - is it 9.0.0, 9.0.1 or 9.0.2?).

[PCJunky]

Chris,

Appologies, Both Error and Information are ticked - I dont know how I manged to screen shot it with it unticked.

As described a succesful backup of a server with 3 partitions hidden/boot/data will result in a minimum of 7 emails.

1, Backups started

2, Partiton was succesfully backed up, one for each partiton so x 3

3, Previous backup was succesfully deleted, one for each image so x 3

Ideally we would prefer just one email, but I happy to go with one per partiton, I dont think this is an error, If I'm understanding this correctly then if anything the application is just OTT in the amount of information it feels it needs to impart.

Rather than debate if this is right or wrong, its realy just a question of can we filter the results more than currently is available in the options screen above, if not can we get this option into a revised build?

When monitoring one backup as an IT administrator to much information is never really an issue, but when that jumps to servers in 3 figures you can see how 7 emails when 1 would do soon does become an issue.

We could start filtering and deleting inbound emails with rules but there is always a danger with that.

Any help would be appriciated.

[Markus_Koestler]

Have you thought about changing the options so that you only get e-mails when backups fail ? I as an Sysadmin like to be notified only when things go wrong.

[PCJunky]

Yes, the problem is when monitoring what is currently about 150 email notification is easy to miss the fact that you have not had notification at all and therefore take maybe a couple of days before you pickup that a backup has stopped working and sending notification.

And with Symantec each time we add a backup to the list we monitor this now grows by at least 7 emails per backup rather than one :(

We have the emails sent to a dedicated exchange mailbox but unfortunatly rules dont seem to work properly when you view the mailbox as an attached mailbox to your own exchange client (which is another problem were looking at)

We started to move away from Acronis 9 when dropped they ball with version 10 (which is an understatement to say the least), it was a very effective and straight forward solution but like all software vendors in the strive to promote upgrades they tried to bolt on everything bar the kitchen sink and tell you its an improvment (glances at microsoft) to be honest Symantec is no better, but at least it works reliably, something Acronis are only just getting under control - but its to little to late.

All we require is a backup solution that can mirror image a drive or drives and write the file to a specified location, preferably only requireing a drive letter and not being tied to a specific hardware id, then mail designated recipients.

However modern backup solutions do clever stuff like not overwriting the last backup, and so they have to track and groom them to keep them in check, which is great but it would be nice if you at least had to option to backup the old fashioned way and overite an image with a static file name (we have alot of customers who backup to USB drives as there cheap and flexible) but thats a discussion for another thread I intend to start ;)

What my main issue is that having got to grips with Symantec BE SR 2010, and likeing it very much, we want to standardise on this one product going forward for all our current and new customers, but this email issue is to be honest a pain, again it's feature/information overload, surely its not asking to much to have the option to only be emailed with a pass or fail.

Anyway it doesnt look or sound like it can currently do this so is there a route to try and get this hotfixed in the current version?

Thanks

[PCJunky]

Also when we were evaluating the software is was version 8.5 and one problem we identified was the inability to specifiy a specific port number for smtp email, something you can do in other products, we spoke to tech support and looked at the forums and it all pointed to this being a known issues and the intention was to fix it in the next version, but alas it never came.

[criley · Accepted solution]

Anyway it doesnt look or sound like it can currently do this so is there a route to try and get this hotfixed in the current version?

As this is not a 'bug', it's unlikely to get fixed in the current version. As mentioned previously, this really is considered as an enhancement request.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you; the SMTP options should be more flexible. Ideally, we should only send 1 message per backup job. Something like the 'job log' in Backup Exec would be ideal (telling you when the job started and finished and details of what it backed up, throughput etc).

I would suggest you submit an enhancement request here:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/backup-and-archiving/ideas

I'm also going to do the same thing internally to see if this can be considered for the next version of BESR.

Let me know if you have any questions/concerns.

[PCJunky]

Ok thanks for that, i suspected as much but wanted to get some feedback here which has been great, I'm very impressed with the speed and quality of feedback.

As you say it not bug but its something I and i'm sure other poeple would agree would be a useful enhancement to the software.

I'll submit a request - thanks for the link, I have a couple of other issues which I feel would make an already good product into a truly great one :)

Many thanks to everyone who took the time to reply.

[criley]

No problem, happy to help.

Feel free to mark this thread as solved then..

[Markus_Koestler]

Would you mark this post as solved ?

[PCJunky]

I can confirm this thread is now finished - there is no solution in the current version of Symantec BESR, but fingers crossed the next version will adress this.

Thank you to everyone involved for taking the time to respond.