1. Backup Checks… the easy way
A look at automating and extending Spiceworks
by
William Nel-Barker

2. The Problem
Backup checks take too long to do!
– Many customers
• If 5 minutes/customer x 60 customers = 3 hrs/day!
– Need to maintain quality of Service
• Techie time can be far better spent than on checks
• Yet backups are essential
• And so backup checks are essential
• Need to automate it

3. The Limitations
– Spiceworks was designed for single site
• Remote Collector adds support for multiple sites
– No native support for multiple customers
• But customers may be added as devices
– No easy way to get data into/out of Spiceworks
• E-mailing data to Spiceworks is safe
• Reading directly from the database is safe
• Custom scripts needed

4. The Challenge
– Insert data into Spiceworks safely
• E-mail helpdesk
• NEVER write to the database!
– Get data out of Spiceworks safely
• Read the database directly
– Notifications arrive by e-mail
• Need to automate Outlook
• Mail rules within Outlook
– Auto-create Backup Check tickets
• Scheduled script that e-mails the helpdesk

5. The Process
– Bullet-proof the checks
• 3 categories: Success, Failure & No Notification
• No Notification is treated as failure!
– Successful backups
• Auto-close the ticket
– Failed backups
• Ticket remains open & techie investigates failure
• Ticket is updated with status
• Account manager is auto-cc’d

6. The Plan
– Automate creation of tickets
• Scheduled VBScript
• Customer (as device) has custom field checkbackup
• VBScript reads from Spiceworks database
• If checkbackup = Yes then create ticket
• We control which customers has a backup check ticket
created from within Spiceworks
– Automate Outlook
• Mail rule to run a script is conditions are met
• Script (VBA) exports message as MSG.TXT file
• VBA Script calls external VBScript
• VBScript reads MSG.TXT

7. The VBScript
• Reads MSG.TXT and looks for certain fields within it
• Mail From tells us who the customer is
• Date tells us when the message was sent
• IF-THEN loops within VBScript for each customer
• SQL query unique for each customer
• Connects to Spiceworks DB and gets ticket NR
• Sends e-mail to update the ticket, e.g. backup
succeeded, so #close the ticket

8. IF-THEN loops
• Not all customers use the same backup software
• Backup notifications are different
• Small Business Server is in Daily Summary Report
• Backup Exec, Altaro, Yosimite, etc send dedicated e-
mail
• We need to support all these methods

9. The Notifications
Example notifications
• Backup Exec: (Server: “< Servername >") (Job: "Full Server")
The job completed successfully. However, the following
conditions were encountered: 29 files were skipped.
• Backup Exec: (Server: “<Servername>") (Job: "Daily
Backup") Daily Backup -- The job failed with the following
error: The item could not be opened while in use.
• SBS 2003 Report: Backup: Completed successfully
• SBS 2008/2011 Report: Backup OK
• Altaro: Successful backup <virtualservername>
• Altaro: Failed backup <virtualservername>

10. Building it
Example IF-THEN loop
If strEmail = "administrator@CustomerName.co.uk" then
strCust = "CustomerName"
strSql = "select * from `tickets` WHERE c_backup_status = 'To be checked'
AND status = 'open' and description = 'Do daily backup check for CustomerName'
AND created_at >= " & strDate
If InStr(strMsg,"Backup Exec Alert: Job Failed (Server:") >30 then
strBody = vbCrLf & "CustomerName - The last backup failed."
strCmd = "#set c_backup_status=Failed"
End If
If InStr(strMsg,"The job completed successfully") >30 then
strBody = vbCrLf & "CustomerName - Last backup: Backup was
successful."
strCmd = "#set c_backup_status=OK"
End If

11. The SQL
select * from `tickets` - get everything from the Tickets table
WHERE c_backup_status = 'To be checked' – This value is set by
the script that creates the ticket
AND status = 'open'
AND description = 'Do daily backup check for CustomerName' –
We want tickets for a particular customer
AND created_at >= " & strDate – We can play with the date to
allow for weekends

12. The E-mail
From: Zantra JAD Backup Checks
Sent: 16 May 2012 11:29
To: Spiceworks
Subject: [Ticket #4303] Customername - do daily Windows backup checks on
16/05/2012
-Summary- -This allows us to cherry-pick what goes into our monthly reports
Customername - Last backup: Windows backup was successful
#assign Backup - Dedicated account to assign backup tickets to
#set c_backup_status=OK - Custom value that makes it easy to run a report
#close - Successful backup, let’s close the ticket!
Recognise this? We’re using Tickets Anywhere!

13. The Overview
• We automate backup checks
• We auto-close successful backup tickets
• We have fail-safes designed into the process
• We add customers as devices
• We use My Ticket Rules to auto-relate tickets to
customers (devices)
• We extensively use custom fields
• We NEVER write to the database
• We save many hours each day

14. The Future
– Flexible system
– Allows support for ANY alerting system
– As long as alerts are by e-mail
– Spiceworks How-to will be published

15. The End