Two weeks ago, I wrote about backing up a remote windows machine using Remote Desktop.
One thing lacking from this solution is email notification. How do we know if the backup job started? Or finished?
There is a free and open source tool that can be used to solve this problem, it is called blat. It consists of an executable, and a DLL.
You can find it at http://www.blat.net/
Download it, and extract the files to a place where your scripts run. In my case, I put it in c:\backups
To start, you will need an SMTP server that you have access to. That is probably the most difficult part of getting it to work – which means it is very easy to use.
If I just want to send a simple email that tells me a batch script has started, I could call it like this:
blat.exe -f batch@intelliadmin.com -to support@intelliadmin.com -server 192.168.1.1 -subject "Batch file started" -body "The very important batch script has started"
You have five required options to get your email to send:
-f [FROM] (This is the email address that the message will come from)
-to [TO] (This is the email address the message will be sent to)
-subject [SUBJECT] (Subject of the email. Uses quotes if you have spaces)
-body [BODY] (Body of email. Use quotes if you have spaces)
-server [SERVER] (IP Address or host name of the server)
That is for a simple message. Blat is filled with powerful options. For example, I could run a robocopy in my script, and redirect the output to a text file like this:
robocopy c:\backup \\server\c\backup >> output.txt
Then, when I send my notification I could attach the output text file to my email like this:
blat.exe -f batch@intelliadmin.com -to support@intelliadmin.com -server 192.168.1.1 -subject "Batch file started" -body "The very important batch script has completed" -attach c:\backup\output.txt
Once the command runs, the output will show up as an attachment in my inbox:
Like I said, it is loaded with options. Check it out, and when you do just type blat.exe -help to get the entire list of command line parameters.
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