If you are a tweaker like I am then you will like this add-in a lot. I always want to be on top of things and know what is happening when I am away from home. How would you like to get an email or text message when your Windows Home Server is having a health issue?
Remote Notification is an add-in by Alex Kuretz for Windows Home Server which will forward system health notifications from the WHS to an email address of your choosing. Although you can select any email address this really comes in handy for when you’re away from home and you configure the add-in to forward these emails to your cell phone or PDA via SMS. Of course – any messages sent to your phone are paid for by you based on your current calling plan so be careful.
This add-in will send a short email/text message anytime the WHS Console icon changes status from from its normal green color. So you may get alerted that a computer on your network has added a new drive, has not been backed up in X number of days (depending on your settings), if your anti-virus/spyware software is out of date or turned off, or that a hard drive is failing or had an error.
You can grab the add-in here (direct download link) and then store it on your WHS in the Software/Add-Ins directory to make it available to the WHS console. The first step is installing the add-in as you would install any other add-in:
Click on the Install button to start the installation and then once it is done you will be prompted to close the WHS console. Once it closes just log back into the console to start the setup of the Remote Notification add-in.
Click on that Remote Notification entry on the WHS Console menu and you will be presented with the setup page.
General Settings
Service – turn the notification process on and off.
Notifications – Choose to be notified about Errors, Warnings or both.
Message Settings
Sender- Name and Email. This is what the email’s From line will have on it when you receive the alert. I use WHS for the name and whs at windowsobserver dot com for the email – of course, taking out the de-spamming elements.
Recipient- this is the email address where you want the notification to be sent. Put everything before the @ sign in the Username block and everything after the @ sign in the Hostname box. There are some examples that may help you out or you can type your own hostname (@windowsobserver.com for instance).
Send Suppressed Notifications – Check this box to also send alerts that you have previously been notified about and suppressed in the WHS Console (under the Home Network Health tab).
Mail Server Settings
SMTP Server- enter the name of your email server. You must have access to an outgoing email server to use this add-in – it does not have its own built in email capability at this point. Maybe that is a feature that can eventually be added by the developer. The Port number (25) should work on most setups and typically you do not require the use of SSL. However if your mail server requires authentication (log in with username and password before sending email) then you must check the box next to Authentication and put in the Username and Password in the SMTP Authentication area.
Once you have everything set up you can test it by clicking on the Send Test Notification button at the bottom of the settings window. If everything is working correctly you will get a notification window like this:
Check the email address you entered and you should see this email:
Make sure you select the Enable button before you close the settings window otherwise the system will not send you the alerts and notifications.
With that, you are now ready to be alerted via email of any problems your home server experiences. This is a handy plug in and very good work by the developer. I know not everyone has access to a mail server so that may be a hindrance to some users but maybe it is a feature that can be added down the road.
23. January 2008 at 4:05 pm
If you don’t have a mail server, you could simply setup the SMTP server component of IIS on WHS and use that. However, hosting your own mail server will generally require configuring a DNS Sender-ID SPF record for your domain/sub-domain to avoid your messages being rejected by the recipient mail server. I don’t know for sure, but I am guessing this isn’t an available feature with on the free MS WHS dns service, however it is supported by many other DNS and Dynamic DNS providers such as DynDNS. If you have a fixed IP address from your ISP, you could also host your own DNS server right off the WHS (using the free, built in Windows Server 2003 DNS server).
DISCLAIMER: I havn’t personally tried this on WHS. Enabling additional server roles such as DNS and STMP servers on your WHS is almost certainly not supported by Microsoft or the OEM vendors and should only be attempted by experienced system administrators who are familiar with these technologies on the standard Windows Server 2003 product. Experimenting with unsupported uses of the WHS, especially if you don’t know exactly what you are doing, may result in making your WHS inoperable and require a full server recovery, possibly resulting in data loss. You have been warned.
23. January 2008 at 10:23 pm
TIm – you make a great point and it is possible we may see more of these “server” type of features in future releases that will allow us to move more and more of our digital world into our homes if we choose to do so.
We are already seeing the opportunities for pictures, video and music. Email can not be too far behind.
23. January 2008 at 10:54 pm
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the thorough review and kind words. I always enjoy hearing people’s experiences with the add-in. Delivering true mail server capabilities to the Add-in is beyond the scope of my goal, unfortunately. However, many webmail providers (such as Gmail) allow SMTP access, and your ISP should provide info on your SMTP server.
I’ve got several ideas for a future release, but with the release of the MSS and subsequent large growth to the forums there have not been able to get to work on the updated Add-In yet.
Feedback from users is welcome at the MediasmartServer.net forums that you linked in your artcile.
Thanks,
Alex
24. January 2008 at 3:50 pm
Remote Notification is a great add-in – the first one I installed on each WHS installs I’ve done. Nice work Alex!
6. February 2008 at 4:31 am
Thank you for this add-in.
I was supprised to see that this type of feature wasn’t built in. I mean come on, my car sends me an email when it needs an oil change! I am curious, however, is a way to get a daily overal status report? I have gotten spoiled by the daily emailed reports from my client’s SBS servers.
6. February 2008 at 10:12 am
Brett,
It is a terrific add-in and the beauty of WHS is that an add-in like this can be written and used by those who want the more advanced features yet keep the basic system straight forward for WHS’s target audience – the non-geek.
What type of info would you expect in a daily status message? Maybe the add-in developer can consider some of that in a future update of the add-in.
1. June 2008 at 7:24 pm
Alex, thanks for posting this review. I just installed a new HP MediaSmart Server for my home office, and got if up and running with remote access and remote notification this weekend. Since I travel a lot as a financial consultant, but I am the IT “administrator” for my family by default, it gives me comfort to know that the server will notify me if there is a problem in my absence. (I usually find out about problems with backup systems when one of the kids’ computers has a HD crash, and then they mention… “Oh, by the way, the backup program started giving me problems a couple of months ago… Oops!… I hope that isn’t going to be a problem.”) Since this is going to be a secondary backup system for each of the other home computers, I was very pleased to find out about this Add-in from your review. Thanks again for the helpful information.
24. July 2008 at 5:19 am
Uninstallation failed. Any idea how to get this add-on uninstalled?