Monitoring Comet Backup with CheckCentral

Binary Fortress Software — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 19:14:51 GMT

Comet Backup is an excellent tool for MSPs who manage file backups for their clients. By using CheckCentral and Comet Backup together, you can have a clear and easy view of your client backups without having to wade through mountains of email notifications. This guide provides details on setting up Checks for Comet Backup notification emails.

Configure the Check

Create and Identify

Checks can be added from various locations in the CheckCentral interface, from the Dashboard, Checks page, Activity page, and the Check Group details page.

Wherever you are, begin by clicking

"

Add Check
."
Select "Start Fresh," and click "Start."
Name the Check. It can be whatever you like, but we would recommend something like:
```
{comet username}: {protected item name}
```
. For this example, the name will be
```
User01: Documents
```
.
Select an existing Check Group or create a new one by clicking "

Add Check Group
."
Select an existing Label or create a new one by typing the name in the text field of the dropdown (optional).
Add a description (optional).

The Asset ID is used exclusively with certain ticketing systems and is not required for Checks. Asset ID details and ticketing systems are more fully covered by other documents (e.g. Halo Integration (asset ID).)

Leave the Asset ID blank unless you've configured your External Ticketing System and have obtained the appropriate ID from that Ticketing System.

Your Check so far will look something like this:

Navigate to the next step in CheckCentral by clicking the "Next" button or the tab name.

Schedule

For this guide, we'll assume this Comet Protected Item has a schedule assigned to it. In order for CheckCentral to notify you when the Check is overdue (e.g. if the Protected Item didn't run as scheduled, or got hung up on its last run), you'll need to configure how often you expect the email to come in. Typically you'll set the Expected Interval values to match the schedule on your Protected Item. In our example, the Protected Item is set to run every day at 9am.

Leave "Scheduled" selected.
Since the Comet job will run daily, leave the Expected Interval on "1" "Day(s)." If your Comet job will run on another interval, adjust accordingly.

The initial expectation time is set by the first email message that is received and processed by its Check. (For example, if a notification email arrives at noon and its Check is set for every half hour, it will expect another notification email at 12:30.)

Leave the Set as Overdue setting at "After 30 Minutes." If the Comet notification email is not received after this amount of time has been exceeded, the Check will be marked as a failure.

Leave Custom Schedule de-selected.

Matching

The Matching step is what matches a notification email to its specific Check. It's also where you'll set the notification's CheckCentral destination email. For CheckCentral to parse notification emails, they must be sent to a "mycheckcentral.cc" address. By default, the email address is [your organization name]@mycheckcentral.cc.

A more unique email address is created using the name given to the Check (with white spaces removed).

Copy the unique email address for later use by clicking on the Copy icon
.

While the email address is important for matching, the same address can be used for multiple Comet backup jobs. Those jobs can include multiple Protected Items and multiple containing Vaults, requiring additional Check details to differentiate between various backups jobs. It's best practice to use matching elements that are consistent with and exclusive to the notification emails for each source. In this example, we'll use the Protected Item name and its Vault name to ensure a one-to-one match.

Click "

Add Matching Rule
" to add a set of matching conditions.
Select "Subject" and "Contains" from the dropdown selectors, then type your
```
{protected item name}
```
in the text field. Our example uses
```
User01: Documents
```
.
Click "

Add Matching Rule
" to add a second set of matching conditions.
Select "Body Text" and "Contains" from the dropdown selectors, then type the
```
{storage vault name}
```
in the text field. Our example uses
```
Offsite Comet Server
```
.
Leave Condense Whitespace and Combine Attachments enabled and the matching modifier set to "All."

The email address will appear different based on your organization name and the name you specified for your check.

Status

The previous Matching step identifies the incoming email to the Check. The Status step looks for indicators of what type of notification you're receiving (e.g. The job was successfully run, it failed, or there were some issues.) The configuration options you choose can vary considerably, but the approach is the same. The Default Status is what is set when the other Rules in this step don't match. Criteria for the remaining statuses then need to be defined, requiring their own unique one-to-one matches.

Leave the Default Status on "Failure."

The "Success Criteria" section is where you'll set the criteria that will mark an activity as successful.

Click

Add Success Rule
.

A successful run of a Comet Protected Item will have the word

Success

in the email Subject.

Set the rule to "Subject contains Success" by leaving the default dropdown selections and typing
```
Success
```
(first letter capitalized) in the empty text field.

The "Warning Criteria" section is where you'll set the criteria that will mark an activity with a warning.

Click

Add Warning Rule
.

A warning result of the Comet job notification will have the word

Warning

in the email Subject.

Set the rule to "Subject contains Warning" by leaving the default dropdown selections and typing
```
Warning
```
(first letter capitalized) in the empty text field.

Leave the Condense Whitespace and Combine Attachments checkboxes enabled.

Notifications

Notifications are simply how you want to be informed of Check Failures, Warnings, and some other Status changes.

Email, push, chat and other software can be integrated as well as ticketing systems, allowing for automatic ticket creation and management.

Further configuration is required for each to function and is done via the Notifications tab in the main menu. They can be configured before or after Check creation.

For more understanding of Notification setup, see the CheckCentral Beginner's Guide (Notifications).

Select the desired means of Notification. If in doubt of the selections here, leave the defaults.

Save

From the Save tab, click the "Save Check" button.

Configure Comet

Now that our Check is created, we'll need to configure Comet to send emails to CheckCentral for this user (User01). In the Comet admin interface, go to Accounts > Users > User01, and add the CheckCentral email address you copied earlier. Make sure to click the "Save Changes" button.

Testing

Manually run your Comet Protected Item.

After the job is done running, refresh your Dashboard. The Check will have a new Status indicator for the recent activity.

Clicking that recent indicator will display the email contents in a modal dialog.

For more detail on Check creation and best practices, see our Check Creation Guide.

For other guides and support contact information, see CheckCentral Support

CheckCentral RSS: Monitoring Comet Backup with CheckCentral

Monitoring Comet Backup with CheckCentral