Database Monitor Email Alerts

The ability to send email alerts warning of Bad Things Happening to your SQL Anywhere database server is the release-defining feature of the new SQL Anywhere Server Monitor now available in beta. Here's one of those emails, this one warning about high CPU usage:



The monitor lets you pick and choose what you want to be warned about:



It's a two-part process to set up who gets the warnings. First, you set up the email server...



Then, you define the email addresses:



Email alerts work OK with ordinary SMTP servers like the one shown here, and the monitor does allow input of a user name and password for authentication purposes.

As far as I can tell everything works fine with ordinary SMTP servers, but it chokes on a server like smtp.gmail.com with the message "Email Server for Alerts not Configured". This may be because the Google Mail server requires transport layer security (TLS) and SQL Anywhere's email code doesn't support that.

I'm just guessing at the connection between the SQL Anywhere Monitor and SQL Anywhere's email support, but it's an educated guess: a standalone test calling xp_startsmtp from a SQL Anywhere 11 database returns -530 which (I think) means "Must issue a STARTTLS command first."

But, that's a minor quibble. The SQL Anywhere Monitor's support for email alerts gives it a significant advantage over its only real competition, the Foxhound monitor.