Enabling mail alerts for configuration management console

This page appears when you click on the Configuration Changes node in the Settings tree of the MAIL ALERTS SETTINGS page (Admin -> Alerts-> Mail Settings -> Alert Settings).

The CONFIGURATION CHANGES section helps administrators to receive alerts on the configuration changes detected on the servers/components monitored by the eG manager. Setting the Enable configuration change alert flag to Yes helps administrators to receive email/sms alerts on the configuration changes detected on the servers/components. By default, this flag is set to No.

Once the flag is set to Yes, the following parameters are required to be configured:

Maximum time between email alert checks (secs): By default, the eG Enterprise system sends email alerts every 3 minutes (i.e., 180 seconds). In some environments, one/more tests could be run very frequently, say every 1 minute or 30 seconds. If these tests report abnormalities, then the user will receive an email alert of the issue only at the 3rd minute. What's worse, if the issue detected by the test is resolved by the time the email alert is sent out by the eG manager, then the user might not even know that a problem had occurred - critical problems could thus go unnoticed! To avoid this, you can reduce the frequency at which the eG manager sends out email alerts. For this, you need to override the default value (of 180 seconds) displayed against the Maximum time between email alert checks text box.

Mail subject: The administrator can customize the subject of the alarm mails by specifying an appropriate subject in the Mail subject text box.

Send alert as attachment: In some environments, the mail servers used for processing email alerts might not be adequately configured to support certain data types/fonts used in the email content. In such cases, alarm information included in the body of the mail could appear distorted / misaligned. To avoid this, the eG manager can be configured to send alerts as attachments, so that users can open the alarm information and view it using any program that they choose. To achieve this, set the Send alert as attachment flag in to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No. Note that both HTML and text alerts can be sent as attachments.

Log mail manager activity: The eG manager can be configured to send out email alerts of configuration changes on the monitored servers to specified recipients. However, in environments where the mail server is not properly configured, critical problem information might not reach users on time, thus causing problems to persist, aggravate, or be unnecessarily escalated to higher authorities. It is hence necessary to continuously track the status of the email activity generated by the eG manager and also provide administrators with alternative access to problem information (in the event of failure of the mail system). To ensure this, eG Enterprise allows mail logging. To enable mail logging, set the Log mail manager activity flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No. By setting this flag to Yes, you can ensure that a log file is created in the <eG_Install_Directory>/manager/log/egmailmanager directory.

Maximum size of log file (MB): To ensure that a single log file is not overloaded with problem details or does not grow enormously in size, you can trigger the creation of additional log files as soon as the size of a log file exceeds a preconfigured limit. This ceiling can be set using the Maximum size of the logfile(MB) text box.

Maximum number of log files: Once the maximum size of log file limit is reached, the eG manager creates a new log file, copies the old data to it, and starts logging the latest information to the older log file. In environments where there is excessive mail activity, this can result in a large number of log files, which might in turn consume too much space on the eG manager host. In such a case, you can conserve space on the eG manager host using the Maximum number of log files configuration. If such a limit is configured, then the eG manager will continue creating new log files only till such time that the said file limit is reached. Beyond this point, no additional log files will be created; instead, the eG manager will overwrite the currently open log file with the newer problem information.

SMS subject: The eG manager is capable of sending SMS alerts to the users regarding configuration changes on the monitored servers/components. To ensure alerts are sent with a subject of his/her choice of the administrator, specify a subject in the SMS subject text box.

Finally, click the Update button to make the changes to take effect.