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IPSentry - Alert - Email Notification via SMTP

The Email Alert provides notification via SMTP ( RFC822 ) that a problem has been encountered on a specific monitored item. You can configure the recipient, sender, relay server and port, subject, and message.

Along with the standard email definitions, the Email alert notification allows for various entries to handle problems that may be encountered regarding an unavailable primary SMTP relay server, multiple recipients, special headers, BCC, and more.

Please see the How-To section for additional information on various configurations.

Enabled
This frame provides a tri-state selection regarding the status of the alert which allows you to enable, disable, or use the global state (default)

• Yes
  The YES option signifies that the alert is enabled for this device and should use the settings provided in the remaining configuration fields for this alert.  The settings for the alert will be unique to this specific entry.
   
• No
  The NO option signifies that this alert is disabled, regardless of the default or other configurations, this alert will NOT be generated in case of a failure of the monitored device under which it is defined.
   
• Default
  The DEFAULT option signifies that the alert should be identical to and make use of the settings outlined in the default configuration model.   Any changes made to the default configuration will be applied to all alerts marked "Default" allowing global changes to alert setting through the default configuration. 
  
  Note that if the default configuration has the enabled flag set to "NO", all alerts marked as "default" will be ignored during the triggering of alerts.

Alert Success
All alerts with the exception of paging alerts make use of this setting.  When checked, the alert will be generated both when the system fails an when the the failure is corrected. 

For example, if you are monitoring a web server and it fails, the alert would be triggered noting that there is a failure.  Additional failure notification will be sent according to the alert schedule outlined below.  Once the system is recovered and the failure corrected, another alert will be generated as an "UP" notification.

In using alerts such as Pager or Email, the IPSentry Keyword %IPS_M_STAT% will be converted to the current state of the device making it possible to recognize immediately whether the alert was triggered due to the system going "DOWN" or coming back "UP".

SMTP Server
Enter the IP Address of the SMTP Relay server that should be used to route the email message to the final recipient.  The SMTP Server must accept SMTP email.

If you require MAPI delivery (Exchange Server), you will need to enter the MAPI declaration followed by the profile name used to send email.  
e.g. MAPI:MS Exchange Settings

If the SMTP Server has any Anti-Spam features enabled that disable email based on this configuration, the alert will never be delivered and an error will be logged.

• Backup SMTP Server Configuration
  IPSentry provides the means necessary for IPSentry to attempt delivery of email through multiple SMTP Relay servers.  Simply enter the IP Address of each mail exchanger that IPSentry should try in the order delivery should be attempted, separated by semi-colon.
  
  (eg: 10.1.1.1; 10.32.32.2; 10.27.33.3 ...)
  
  In the event the first server is unavailable, IPSentry will attempt to deliver the message through the next relay host.  IPSentry will attempt each host until the email is successfully accepted for delivery or until the list has been exhausted.
  
  This option is not used for MAPI delivery.

Port
This field signifies the TCP port on which IPSentry should connect in order to deliver the message.  By default, this field is set to 25 (SMTP), however, some internal SMTP servers may be setup on non-standard ports which will require that this field be changed to match the listening port of the mail exchanger. 
This option is not used for MAPI delivery.

User (Version 4.4 and up only)
When sending mail through an Authenticated SMTP server, you can fill in the User and Pwd fields appropriately. If you are not using a secure SMTP server, an error 5xx unrecognized command may be returned from the server if you enter anything into one of these fields. 
This option is not used for MAPI delivery.

Password (PWD) (Version 4.4 and up only)
When sending mail through an Authenticated SMTP server, you can fill in the User and Pwd fields appropriately. If you are not using a secure SMTP server, an error 5xx unrecognized command may be returned from the server if you enter anything into one of these fields.

From
Enter the email address to be used as the FROM address in the email message.   This field must be in standard name@domain.com address format unless you relay server is prepared to accepted 'default domain' from addresses.

Most problems involving configuration of the Email alert are due primarily to an invalid email address format specified in the FROM/TO fields.

This option is not used for MAPI delivery - the from address is pulled from the profile specified.

To
Enter the email address of the recipient (or recipients) of the email message.   This field must be in standard name@domain.com address format unless you relay server is prepared to accepted 'default domain' from addresses.

• Multiple Recipients
  You may specify multiple recipients by simply separating the email addresses with a comma ",".
  eg: me@here.com, you@there.com, somebody@somewhere.com
   
  
• BCC Directive
  In some cases (especially when monitoring your customer sites), you may want several internal messages to be delivered along with a message to the customer.  In this case, you may not want the customer to see the address of the internal support staff, so a BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) can be utilized.
  
  To accomplish this, simply precede the "TO" address line with "BCC:".  This will cause IPSentry to send a unique email address to each recipient in the list without including the actual recipient list in the "TO" line of the received message.
  eg: BCC:me@here.com, you@there.com, somebody@somewhere.com
  

Note: Most problems involving configuration of the Email alert are due primarily to an invalid email address format specified in the FROM/TO fields.

Subject
The contents of this field will be placed in the subject field of the email message.  All IPSentry KeyWords used in this field will be translated before the message is sent allowing you to specific crucial information in the subject of the message as well as the message text itself.

Remember, when Alert Success is checked for this alert, the %IPS_M_STAT% keyword will be replaced by either UP or DOWN depending on the state of the device.  Use of this keyword in the subject is highly desired for obvious reasons.

Message
Enter the message you wish to send when this alert is triggered.  All IPSentry KeyWords used in this field will be translated.

• Special Headers
  In many cases, you may want to insert special header information into the email message which may trigger special actions upon receipt of these alerts (either by the mail client software or within the mail processing cycle itself).
  
  In order to specify special headers, you would make use of the "<HEADER:..." directive at the top of the message text.
  
  Syntax: <HEADER:HeaderName: VALUE>
  Use of this directive would cause an email header "HeaderName" with the value of "VALUE" to be inserted into the headers of the email message before the message is sent to the server.
  
  For instance, if you wanted to set Importance to HIGH and Priority to 1 to ensure that special attention was given to these email messages, you might use the following directives:
  <HEADER:X-Priority: 1>
  <HEADER:Importance: high>
  
  IPSentry expects NOTHING ELSE on a HEADER line.
  Also note: You can use the IPSentry KeyWords in the header fields as replacement values.   Be careful not to use a value with a new line character...  Save that info for your test message.
  
  Special headers are not used for MAPI delivery.

Alert Schedule
The alert schedule allows you "fine tune" the alerting functions to avoid unnecessary alerting during an extended failure.  You may not want to be paged every single time a failure is detected after the first alert.  You can use this schedule to set how many failures must be detected before the first alert.  Set how many failures must be detected for each subsequent alert, and the maximum number of alerts you feel are adequate to obtain a response from specified personnel. 

• First After [n] failures
  Represents the number of sequential failures that must occur before the alert notification is processed.  You can increase this value if you notice a large amount of false alerts being processed.  On some systems, response times may not be consistent and a failure may be detected due to overhead at peak times.  If the failure continues for this number of cycles, the alert will be processed.
   
• Every [n] failures
  Once the first alert has been processed, IPSentry will only process the alert notification after this many sequential failures.  In many cases, once a failed entry has triggered an alert, notification during every IPSentry polling cycle is not usually required.
   
• Max of [n] alerts
  Enter the maximum number of times you want IPSentry to process the alert notification.  A value of -1 - infinite.  This counter is based on sequential failures without a single success.
   

Note:  Setting the first-after or every values to any value less than 1 can have unexpected results.

Load Defaults (button)
This button will load the default configuration information into the appropriate fields.  This is a quick way to use a standard configuration with minor variations between entries.

Note: You need NOT use this option when the enabled option is set to "Default" since the replacement of the alert configuration with default configuration values will be done automatically when the alert is triggered.  You need only use this button when the enabled option is set to YES and you wish to slightly modify the default configuration and make the entry specific to the monitored device to which this alert is related.

Test Alert (button)
This option will attempt to process the alert as configured. A message will be displayed regarding failure or success of the alert generation.

Related Topics

• IPSentry - Alert Options

• IPSentry - Alert - Pager - Alpha (Email/SMTP) Configuration

• IPSentry - Information - Keywords

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