How do I get started?

What are "tokens"? How do I send email into the system?

Token Tips

What are Resources? Patterns? Schedules?

What are Status Alerts? What are Email Stream Watchers?

Setting up your first server monitor

I want to change my plan or cancel, is it prorated?

How much does it cost?

What backup monitoring vendors does BackupLegend work with?

• How do I get started?

  • Configure your backup system to send as many emails as you can (Ideally an email on failure, AND success, warning).
  • Create a group ("SQL"? "Web"?), and add a Resource to it. This resource represents a server (see below FAQ). Add a schedule, and Pattern to the resource.

  
  

  If you are able to configure your backup software at the server level, you can have it send to in_user_TOKEN@backuplegend.com - where TOKEN is the resource token. This will ensure 100% correct categorization of your incoming emails.

  If you're not able to change the TO address in your backup software per resource, you can send to in_user@backuplegend.com - and be sure the TOKEN is somewhere in the email. Generally this is done in one of 2 ways. Either placing OUR token in the backup job title/somewhere in the software, or perhaps changing your resource token to be the name of your backup Job "SQL01-daily" could be your token.




• What are "tokens"? How do I send email into the system?

  Tokens are used to correlate incoming emails to specific resources. There are 2 levels of tokens. Your company token, which defines the prefix of your email address for ALL emails coming into the system. If your company token is YOURCOMP, your email would be in_YOURCOMP@backuplegend.com.

  Resources have tokens as well, resource tokens can be used in two ways:

  • You can email to in_[company-token-here]_[resource-token-here]@backuplegend.com - if your backup software allows a specific email address per job.
  • Your resource token can also be set to a phrase that BackupLegend will search the body of any incoming company email for.
    
    Examples:
    
    
    • DailyBackup123 - If the backup job, within the backup software, reports that name anywhere in the email sent to in_YOURCOMP@backuplegend.com - it will be matched.
    
    
    • 3803c0510b155e2b74c21d2180f0826f (random string) - you can use the default randomized resource token, and add it to the "description" field in your backup software. This will cause the backup software to include it in the emails it sends about that job, and therefore a match will be made.
  
  

  Token Tips

  Your company token, will pretty much never change. If you changed it, you'd have to update all of your backup systems to the new address - no one wants to do that.

  
  
  

  We randomly generated one to start, because it's required. It's an awful token though.

  Why send all your backup emails to in_23123412341234@ when it could be in_sqrt@? or in_company@ - use your domain, or your favorite short alphanumeric company akronym. This is *account* wide for *your* organization.

  
  

• What are Resources? Patterns? Schedules?

  Resources are generally servers, which are backed up on a recurring basis by your backup software. We use the terminology Resource, as this may also represent specific elements of data, such as: SQL data, Files, or Image level backups. For example, you may have 3 backups running on a single SQL server: SQL Backup, Operating System, and Transaction Logs. Those are 3 separate resources, backed up on potentially 3 different schedules.

  Patterns represent what you look for, in order to determine whether or not a backup has succeeded. They can be "simple" (find this phrase), or regex (regular expressions) for complex patterns.

  Schedules determine the frequency of the backup. This should be setup to match your backup schedule for this resource. You can have multiple schedules, to produce the desired effect. (IE, a twice a week backup schedule, Monday and Thursday, would be entered as 2 schedules: 1 Monday , every 7 days, 1 Thursday, every 7 days). The important part, is that the backup schedule is set to go off before your backup software. At each iteration, a Status is created and waiting in BackupLegend - waiting for the email from your backup system. This is how the system measures duration of backup (from start of backup schedule, to email received).




• What are Status Alerts? What are Email Stream Watchers?

  Status Alerts allow you to receive email notifications upon certain status conditions (success, waiting, expired). You can create a Status Alert at a resource, group, or company level.

  Email Stream Watchers are automated monitors which email in the event of a detected pattern (see Patterns above).




• Setting up your first server monitor

  1. Create a group, this group could be for a customer, a location, or just a logical organization."Customer 1"
  2. Within that group, create a resource. A resource could be a server, or something IN the server - generally 1 resource = 1 backup job. - "DB-SRV"
  3. Teach backup Legend how to monitor that Resource. - Setup a schedule, telling backup legend when it should expect an email about this backup (a good practice would be 30minutes before the backup starts.. to prevent clock skew issues)
  4. Set or use a token. Depending on your software configurability, there are several paths that all get you to the same place. This stage gets emails to be associated with this particular server. If you never set a token, you would still get the emails over on the "Incoming Emails" section. You can then set the token, and "reprocess" the email - to reassociate it to the correct resource.
  5. Set your patterns. Teach backup legend what you consider a success/warning/failure. Be as granular as you like - you could simply teach it success, and any time success never arrives, the status will expire automatically. We have templates setup for many backup products, so you can configure them with 1 click. If you fail to set the pattern, you would have the emails associated and showing up - but all statuses would expire, because backup legend is unable to classify the email into a particular status.



There are all sorts of advanced ways to use BackupLegend - but getting started is the key. We'd recommend configuring your first few, tuning the patterns/schedules, and clone to move forward.



• I want to change my plan or cancel, is it prorated?

  On cancel, cancellation is effective end of month (not immediate, so no proration).

  Account changes are prorated for subscription upgrade/downgrade

  Note:If you were 1/2 through the month, and the next plan up was $50 more, you would be charged $25 for the remainder of the month. All changes in plans are prorated, and the change is immediate.




• How much does it cost?

  Sign up is free. Upon sign up your 30 day free trial automatically begins. Through your account you'll be able to view plans, compare, and upgrade.




• What backup monitoring vendors does BackupLegend work with?

  BackupLegend is vendor agnostic. The most popular backup monitor vendors among BackupLegend users include Ahsay, Symantec Backup Exec, and Windows Server Backup.

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