Once you have your WHS setup and running the way you want, are you one of those WHS owners who tuck your machine into a corner or closet? Kind of an out-of-sight out-of-mind appliance at that point? If you are, you probably fit into the initial vision of what Microsoft intended a WHS to be.
But what happens if your WHS has a problem? Perhaps the backup service dies. Or some other disaster that does not hang the machine. How do you know it happened, or what the problem is? Perhaps you’re at work or travelling; with Event Monitor, you can check your emails and make sure everything is running smoothly.
That is the inspiration for the add-in I am looking at today, WHS Event Monitor. Once properly setup, this add-in will send you an email notification of particular events that are documented/recorded/viewable in Windows Event Viewer.
From my now “famous” (as in repetitive) installation opening statement:
Installing the add-in is as simple as any other add-in. Copy the msi installer to your D:SoftwareAdd-ins folder, open the WHS Setting Window in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.
Open the console from your client machine and locate the System Event Monitor icon along the top of console window, as seen below.
As usual, when I install a new program/add-in, I am first interested in getting things setup and working. The window you see above is similar to one you will see, except I have already filled in the SMTP email information. Blanked out, of course!
For those who are familiar with SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), filling in the blanks should be quite simple. I have never used SMTP previously, so this was entering new territory for me. The easiest route for me to set this up was to use my Gmail account as the SMTP server. You can use your own ISP, assuming that they have or allow the use of SMTP. Google likes Port 587, so that is what I entered in the Port line.
Assuming you are using Gmail, enter your user name (xxx @ gmail.com) and account password in the appropriate places. From: is the same as Username:. I send the email to one of my “normal” email accounts, which is the information you need to put in the To: line. Google requires SSL, so check the SSL box. The Use SMTP Auth box comes checked as part of the install. Both are required, at least for use with Gmail.
Once you have entered your data, it is a quite painless to check your work. Simply click on the Test button. In my case, the following message came up within a few seconds.
If you did something wrong, you will get a message similar to one of the following.
Those error messages were the result of unchecking the the SSL and Use SMTP Auth boxes.
Once you have SMTP up and running, you need to decide what you want Event Monitor to email to you. An example of what is available to you can be seen in the left lower window of the following picture. Once you have set up this part of the add-in the way you want, simply hit the Save button. Event Monitor is now up and running. Simple, right?
During this setup step if you set one of the log Types to “All” and click on save, you will get the following message:
This is where you find a bug in the add-in. Clicking on OK saves the configuration. If you decide, however, that you do not want “All” and click on Cancel, the WHS console freezes. I do my work from a RDC, so it was easy for me to close the console. I did not try this with a direct Console connection, so I do not know the result. Just be forewarned! You will get the following message. Then comes the big freeze!
There is one additional configuration item to change, if you desire to change the default. Event Monitor defaults to a 60 minute interval between emails. Change it whatever you wish for a notification interval. In my case, about an hour after hitting the “Save” button, I got the following email. To tell you truth I have no idea what error was, but is was nice to get the automated information email.
I did find an additional bug. When working in a RDC, if you minimize/restore the console window when in the Event Monitor tab, the background color bleeds through, as can be seen below. The normal gray color changes to the background (blue) color. Clicking from this tab to another and back restores the correct colors. Just a very minor annoyance.
There are 2 very nice options that I would really like to see incorporated into other add-ins. One is a RSS feed that opens in your browser. All the latest news regarding Event Monitor can be found here. The second, and more beneficial, is a direct link to the author’s Home page for Event Monitor. If you have a problem, simply click on this and off you go.
Finally, you will notice that there is a window in the right side of the console that does not work at this time: “Work in progress”. Since the release date of this add-in is over a year old, I wonder what the status of future development is. Although in its present form, it does work as intended. And it did give me a little education on SMTP, which is a plus in itself.
So is this an add-in for you? It does what it is intended to do, with a few problems discussed above. It would be nice to see the author incorporate his planned enhancements. Whether this is something that you feel you need, that is up to you.
Author: Dave Mercer
Version Reviewed: 1.1.1.0
Release: 01Dec2007
