Maintenance Task Alert/Feedback

Question

Our software is running a maintenance task on a server. After or during the task, an important alert/feedback need to be sent to the user. The issue often need to be resolved before the next day.

The user rarely logs into the server because he just assumes it's working correctly.

The current solution is to send the user an email containing the alert/feedback. The problem is we have to supply a SMTP to the software so he can send the email.

I'm pretty sure I'm overlooking a more simple / elegant solution to this. Or should I force him to sit down in front of the server every once in a while ? Or should I use a totally different approach ?

Answer 1

This is a very wide question. What you're looking for is some kind of method to send a message from a server to a person. Of the top of my head, you could use:

• Email (SMTP)
• SNMP
• FTP (upload a message to a forwarded server)
• HTTP (access a web service that sends a message)
• GSM (install a GSM card and have the server send an SMS)
• etc...

They vary in complexity and applicability, but that's just 5 off the top of my head. It's going to depend on the skill set of your employees and what your favourite vendors provide.

My own opinion is that there's not much simpler that using sendmail to send an email, but I don't know much about your server... you didn't mention OS, configuration or, indeed, whether it's even connected to ethernet.