Sam Wood, Windows Home Server MVP and the developer of the must have Windows Home Server Add-In Disk Management, has put together an application that emails you about your backups.
Here is what Sam has posted on his blog:
The We Got Served forums have a dedicated board for user-submitted ideas for Windows Home Server Add-Ins. I like to know what users think WHS is missing, so I keep an eye out for any new posts.
Yesterday, Ron Levenberg posted an interesting request:
I would love to be able to get a daily e-mail that confirms to me that all my PCs connected to my home server have been backed up successfully and, if not, which PCs don’t have current backups. It could be something like the Computers & Backups page data. I don’t want to login to the server to verify this, and I certainly don’t want to View Details for each PC to make sure all of yesterday’s backups are good.
Because I thought this sounded like a great idea, I’ve baked a console application to do just that.
Windows Home Server Client Backup Notifier (what a name!) can be run from a command-line, or as a scheduled task, and emails you high-level information about the state of your client backups.
The output looks like this:
CLIENT1 (192.168.1.22) --------------------------------- Last Good Backup: 31/07/2010 2:58:01 p.m. Last Backup Status: Complete Current Health Status: Normal CLIENT2 (192.168.1.23) --------------------------------- Last Good Backup: 1/08/2010 4:31:20 a.m. Last Backup Status: Complete Current Health Status: Normal CLIENT3 (192.168.1.24) --------------------------------- Last Good Backup: 1/08/2010 6:11:19 a.m. Last Backup Status: Complete Current Health Status: Normal Backup is running
I’ve tested the SMTP functionality with Google’s SMTP server, and with a ‘normal’, non-encrypted, SMTP server and it works great.
Download WhsClientBackupNotifier here.
I’m interested to know how many people find this useful. If you try it out, or if you encounter any bugs or issues, or want to offer a suggestion for improvement, get in touch.
Well done Sam, that is excellent work. I look forward to seeing your next project.
I like it, alot. This is one of the most useful addins I have seen. Since backups are one of the primary functions of a WHS most people will welcome a means to conveniently know if they occurred as scheduled.
Nice application! Very useful. If you use your WHS for backups, this is a must have.
What config settings did you use for Google mail?
I've tried, the below to no avail:
Many thanks.
What config settings did you use for Google mail?
I
Error: The SMTP server requires a secure connection or the client was not authen
ticated. The server response was: 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first. d38
sm12478635wam.20
Hi Peter,
You need to enable SSL for google's SMTP server. Set smtpEnableSsl to "true".
Bingo! That did it.
You also need to set
smtpAuthentication=