Poor mans backup notifications using Windows Backup

Have you only got a server or two and not much budget to work with? I’m guessing you might also be using the built in Windows Backup?

There isn’t actually much wrong with using Windows Backup. It does the job, just without all those extra features of paid-for backup solutions. One big missing feature for example is notifications of backup results.

So here’s a quick and easy way to keep track of those backups. It’s not the neatest solution, but it is better than nothing!

1. Open Event Viewer
2. Navigate to “Applications and Service Logs | Microsoft | Windows | Backup | Operational”
3. In the events list, locate an entry with EventID 4 and right click it
4. Select “Attach Task To This Event…”
5. In the Wizard, Click through to the “Action” step
6. Ideally you would use a program to do something. Even though it is deprecated in Server 2008R2, I still use the “Send an e-mail”
   1. The option still appears in Server 2012 and Windows 8, but you will get an error 2147750704 when trying to save the task. I’ll update this post with a PowerShell script version soon
7. Enter the details for From, To, a subject, and the SMTP server to use
8. Complete the wizard

Now, every time “The backup operation has finished successfully” you will get an email. If you don’t get an email, then something probably didn’t work.

You can add additional tasks for other events such as failures (or even all events!), but you get the idea. This isn’t a perfect solution, but it’s better than nothing at all.

If you want a list of all the Windows Backup error codes, here you go: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc734488(WS.10).aspx