How to monitor your backups with PRTG

Introduction Backup notification emails. Aren't they a pain? They either clog up your inbox, or require you to monitor a separ...

Introduction

Backup notification emails.

Aren't they a pain?

They either clog up your inbox, or require you to monitor a separate mailbox.

Worse, there is no way of checking for backups that haven't run, or are stuck half way through, other than you remembering to check for an *email that hasn't arrived*.

Using PRTG, we can monitor our backup mailboxes, and configure alerts if emails are not received in time. We can stop worrying about backups and get on with our day!

Steps (7 total)

1

Install PRTG

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I'm not going to go into detail here - I will assume that you either have PRTG installed, or are capable of downloading and configuring it.

If this is the first time you're using it, you can easily use the free version (with up to 100 sensors) for this task. It really is very simple!

2

Configure your mailbox

The exact steps here will depend on your mail system. We use Office365. The key points are:
- use a dedicated mailbox for backup notifications e.g. backups@company.com
- the mailbox must be accessible via IMAP

Create a new folder in the root of the mailbox for each backup system you will be monitoring, and create mailbox rules to move emails into the appropriate folder.

We also set retention policies on the folders to delete messages older than 7 days - this stops the mailbox filling up over time.

3

PRTG - create the device

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Create a new device in PRTG, called something like 'Backup Monitor'. Under IPv4 address/DNS name, enter the address of your mail server.

You will probably want to change the scanning interval from the default - you don't want or need to hammer the mail server every minute. We set ours to check every 10 minutes, which is perfectly sufficient,

4

PRTG - create the sensor

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Create a new IMAP sensor underneath your new Backup Monitor device - this is as simple as clicking 'new sensor', then typing IMAP into the search box.

Give it a suitable name (we use the server name and backup type), and enter the username and password of the mailbox you created in step 2.

5

PRTG - sensor configuration part 1

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In the 'Identify Email' section, tick the 'Process emails in this mailbox' radio button.

Enter the name of the folder for this server under 'Mailbox Name'. If you are only monitoring 1 backup system, then this could be 'Inbox', otherwise you will need a separate folder and suitable mailbox rules for each system.

Now, the interesting bit! We want to check the last message date, so that we are alerted if an email is not received. This can happen if the backup software has thrown a wobbly, or if a backup is running for an excessive amount of time.
So, tick the 'Check for new messages received within the last x hours' box, and enter suitable thresholds. For daily backups, ours are set to flag a warning if an email is not received every 24 hours, and go to an error state after 36. PRTG will follow your rules for alerting the appropriate people!

6

PRTG - sensor configuration part 2

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So, we're checking that we're receiving emails regularly - but what if the backup software has sent a 'failure' email? We need to be alerted about that too.

In this example, if the backup completes successfully then the software sends a 'backup successful' message. If it doesn't complete, then there are several different messages it could send - maybe 'backup failed' or perhaps 'backup completed with warnings'.

So, our logic is as follows: "If we receive any email other than 'backup successful', we want to be alerted.

Therefore, we configure the sensor to set to error if the subject does NOT contain the word 'successful.

You will need to modify this part depending on the exact messages your backup software sends!

7

PRTG - configuration complete!

We're done!

You will need to create a new sensor for each backup system you want to monitor, and you will probably think of other systems you wish to monitor in this way as well.

Make sure you test the behaviour of the sensors before depending on the alerts. You can keep an eye on the backups mailbox for a while to ensure that everything it behaving itself.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You are freed from the burden of checking for backup emails. You can be confident that problems will be bought to your attention, and you hopefully have a status window full of nice green ticks.