Configuring an SMTP Mail Server to Send SMS Alerts

The key pre-requisite for this is to use an SMTP mail server that is capable of sending SMS messages to mobile phones. You can even use the mail server configured for email alerting for this purpose.

Once you have such a mail server, then do the following to configure that mail server to send SMS alerts:

  1. Login to the eG manager host.
  2. Edit the eg_services.ini file in the <EG_INSTALL_DIR>\manager\config directory (on Windows; on Unix, this will be the /opt/egurkha/manager/config directory).

  3. Look for the [SMTP_SMS_ALERTS] section in the file. This section will contain the following entries by default.

    SMTP_SMS_ALERTS]

    SendSMSAlertsOverSMTP=false

    mail.smtp.host=smtp.myserver.com

    mail.smtp.port=25

    mail.smtp.auth=false

    mail.smtp.starttls.enable=false

    mail.smtp.auth.username=john

    mail.smtp.auth.password=password

    from.email=sender@myserver.com

    to.email=$mobilenumber@myserver.com

  4. To enable SMS alerting over SMTP, first set the SendSMSAlertsOverSMTP flag to true.
  5. Then, against the mail.smtp.host parameter, enter the fully qualified host name of the SMTP mail server that you want to use for sending the SMS alerts.
  6. Next, enter the port at which this mail server listens against mail.smtp.port.
  7. If your mail server requires authentication, then set the mail.smtp.auth flag to true. If this is done, then provide a valid user name and password to authenticate against mail.smtp.auth.username and mail.smtp.auth.password parameters, respectively.

  8. When the eG manager generates an alarm, then the corresponding alarm information will be sent as an email from the from.email that you specify. This email alert will be received by the to.email that you configure. The format of the to email ID should be: $mobilenumber@<domainname>. For instance, your specification can be $mobilenumber@abc.com.

    $mobilenumber is a variable name, and should not be changed. At runtime, this variable will be replaced by the mobile numbers that you configure in the eG administrative interface for SMS alerting.

  9. Finally, save the file.

The next time the eG manager detects a problem condition, the manager sends the details of that problem as an email alert to each of the email IDs that correspond to the mobile numbers that you have configured in the eG administrative interface. Upon receipt of an email, the to email ID then converts that email into an SMS and routes it to the corresponding mobile number.