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Veeam Backup & Replication

Monitoring Veeam backups by email

Veeam emails you when a job ends: Success, Warning or Failed. You will notice a Failed email sooner or later. You will not notice the one that never arrives: the service is stopped, the job is disabled, the server is off, and nobody finds out for days. This guide shows how to turn on notifications in Veeam and have Mail Monitor check both the result and the arrival of every email.

1. Turn on email notifications in Veeam

In the Veeam Backup & Replication console open the main menu, then Options, E-mail Settings tab.

  • Tick “Enable e-mail notifications” and enter the SMTP server. Recent versions also accept a Microsoft 365 or Gmail account with OAuth 2.0.
  • In “To” enter the mailbox Mail Monitor will read: ideally a dedicated one, such as [email protected].
  • Keep the %JobResult% and %JobName% variables in the subject: the result in square brackets and the job name are what your rules will look for.
  • Send on Success, Warning and Failure. You need the success email too: its absence is what triggers the alert.
  • Use “Test Message” to make sure the email arrives.

2. When one job must report elsewhere

Global settings apply to every job. For a job with different needs open its properties, Storage step, Advanced button, Notifications tab: there you can set recipients and settings for that job only.

3. Create the check in Mail Monitor

One check per job: if one goes missing, you know which.

  • Connect the mailbox over IMAP. We always open it read-only: nothing is moved or deleted.
  • Sender: the “From” address set in Veeam. Subject contains: the job name.
  • Must contain Success; must not contain Failed. Whether Warning is an error is up to you.
  • Expected: the job’s schedule (daily, Mon–Fri, or a cron expression on the Premium plan) with a cut-off time and a tolerance. If the job usually ends at 05:10, “by 06:00” is a good choice.
  • Before saving, test the rules on the last 50 emails already received: you see right away which would be OK, ERROR or ignored.

4. What happens when something goes wrong

  • A [Failed] email arrives: the check turns ERROR, with the rule that triggered it.
  • Nothing arrives by the cut-off time: the check turns MISSING. This is the case Veeam’s own notifications cannot cover.
  • Either way an alert goes out: to you, right away or in the daily digest, and if you want to your customer, from your SMTP and with your logo.

5. Beyond email

On the Premium plan you can add a threshold on a number written in the email, such as the job duration, and an API check: in the job properties, Storage, Advanced, Scripts tab, run a PowerShell script after the job that calls the check URL. If the job does not run, the call never arrives and the check turns MISSING even when email is down.

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing <check-URL>

Try it on your Veeam jobs

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