Backup Exec FAQ

Backup Exec can email selected recipients after a job, and include the status, and a copy of the job log if required.

Notifications can be sent by four methods:

• SMTP
• MAPI (for Microsoft Exchange)
  
• VIM (for Lotus Notes)
• Pager

In Europe at least, pagers are basically obsolete, so I won't cover them here. Both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes support SMTP, and in most organisations they will be configured to receive SMTP mail. For this reason I'd recommend using SMTP notification.

To configure SMTP notifications:

1. Click Tools, E-mail and pager notification
2. Tick the Enable box
3. Enter the full DNS name of your email server. You can also enter the IP address.
4. Enter a name and email address who you want notifications to appear to be from
5. Click OK

Once the SMTP configuration is complete, add some recipients:

1. Click Tools, Recipients
2. Click New
3. Ensure Person is selected and click OK
4. Add a name for the recipient, tick the Enable box, add their email address, and optionally any limits on notification
5. It's a good idea to click the test button and ensure the recipient receives an email
6. Click OK and Close
   

Add notifications to jobs:

1. Open an existing job (or create a new job)
   
2. Under Notification, tick the recipients who should be notified
3. If you want the recipient to get detailed information, click Include the job log

Caveats

Sometimes (particularly when DST changes) notifications can stop working, even though the settings remain the same. In this case, open the job, remove theticks from the recipient,then re-add them.

Backup Exec doesn't do any email queue management, so if the email server is unavailable when the notification is sent, it won't retry when the mail server becomes available again.