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Monitoring Send from Solarwinds

We've got a large number of Solarwinds servers at client sites. From time to time email alerting is affected by network changes. Unfortunately, the issue persists until someone happens to login to Solarwinds and sees alerts that we haven't received emails about. We'd like to setup a monitor to verify that our Solarwinds server can send emails out to us.

The POP3/IMAP4 monitors won't work for us because it will require each client to configure their networks to allow inbound email traffic to our server.

I've been experimenting with telnet using a VBScript. I've determined that there are two ways to really go about this effectively.

1) Install 3rd party application/dll and call this with VBScript.

2) Use VBScript to call telnet in a terminal with output to a log file. Read from the file, then delete/clear the file.

Neither solution is really optimal, so I was wondering if anyone else has figured out how to handle this situation.

Once the monitor is set up we will add the monitors to the EOC page so that we can see when there are issues with email delivery.

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Accepted answers

bobross

Just wanted to follow up on this.

Testing the Port 25 monitor from our local box to the box at the client site failed.

What we ended up doing was running a VBScript that calls plink (plink is a command line version of putty). Since putty is used by pretty much everyone in the office, management gave the thumbs up.

Its a pretty basic script that just checks for a 220 response from the SMTP server. I wasn't able to get a 'helo' command to properly respond from inside Solarwinds, but a 220 response should give adequate monitoring of SMTP traffic.

Here is the script I've got running as a test over the next few days:

strCommand = "C:\plink.exe -telnet -P 25 smtp.server.com"
Set wshObj = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set exec = wshObj.Exec(strCommand)

strText = exec.StdOut.Readline()
exec.Terminate

set re = new regexp
re.Pattern = "220"

if Not re.Test(strText) Then
  WScript.Echo "Message: SMTP Failed"
  WScript.Echo "Statistic: 1"
  WScript.Quit(1)
End If

WScript.Echo "Message: " & strText
WScript.Echo "Statistic: 0"
WScript.Quit(0)

All comments

aLTeReGo

There's a couple different ways of going about this but first the VBScript you mentioned, what would that connect to via telnet and where would it be run from? Would this be a telnet/VBscript run from your central office run against your clients Orion servers, or would this be a telnet/VBscript run on the customers APM server pointed at what server over what port?

The way I'd probably handle this is to setup a POP3 or IMAP4 User Experience monitor against Gmail. If they can send mail to Gmail then most likely they can send mail to you.

Another option would be to install the IIS SMTP server on the Orion server and point the Advanced Alert Manager to use the localhost SMTP server for email delivery. Then configure the reply-to address on email alerts to go to someone in the local office so should a bounce back message be sent, such as email delivery failed the bounce back message would go to someone in the local office who could then notify you through some other means. The idea being that the server may not be able to deliver mail to you, but it should be able to deliver email to the exchange server sitting in the next rack over.

The last trick up my sleeve would be to leverage PageGate and a traditional or cellular modem to send alerts if they're not acknowledged after some predetermined time interval.

bobross

The VBScript that I'm looking at would be run locally on the Solarwinds server at a client site. It would open a telnet connection over port 25 to our externally facing email server and possibly execute a HELO command. I've tested manually on a server that we can receive email from as well as from a server that we can't receive an email from and I am seeing the expected behavior. The tricky part is getting it scripted into VBScript. The third party DLL/App option is a no go due to confidentiality issues (management decision).

Google searches for telnet using vbscript indicate that this is a problem with no real solution, but I was hoping someone here might be able to assist. If nothing else I'll work up a script and post it up for anyone with some more VBScript experience to help tweak a bit.

The best solution I've been able to come up with so far is to have VBScript call Telnet and log the output to a file, then read the file and parse for success/failure. I think it will be workable, but its so inelegant that I wouldn't want to put my name on it.

Regarding POP3/IMAP4 User Experience Monitors, the problem we have with this is uncooperative site staff that would need to open up the inbound ports. Getting them all to comply would be way more work than setting up a VBScript to do this.

Emails to local site staff was considered, but was shot down by management for "business reasons". That would have been a good solution though.

The final option of using PageGate won't work for our shop either for a number of reasons.

aLTeReGo

So instead of using the VBScript why not use the TCP Port monitor and define the port as 25. This would be virtually identical to your VBScript short of the HELO, but it's reasonable to assume that if the port is open/listening then you can send mail.

bobross

Can you explain how the TCP port monitor works? Does it send traffic somewhere and will it show as down if the problem doesn't lie on the Solarwinds' box itself, but somewhere else on the network?

The description of the TCP Port Monitor says " This component monitor tests the ability of a TCP/IP-based service to accept incoming sessions." Which indicates that outgoing traffic might still not be working.

I'm not against the idea, but without an understanding of how the TCP port monitor works I'll have a hard time selling it as sufficient monitoring of Solarwinds alerting.