SCOM 2012R2 Alert notifications error - Failure to send, happens pretty frequently

Question

Afternoon,

I am seeing this fairly often in my production environment. The target machine referenced is the primary management server that is in the notifications pool. Both of the management servers are in the notifications pool. I was going to temporarily remove the primary management server from the pool but I do not know what effect that would have on the system? Why would the error reference the primary management server as the issue?

Failed to send notification using device/server 'servername' over 'Smtp' protocol to 'me@mydomain.com'.

Exception 'Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.HealthService.Modules.Notification.SmtpNotificationException': Failure sending mail. --> Unable to connect to the remote server --> No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it xx.xxx.xx.xx:25. Smtp status code 'GeneralFailure'

Thanks,
TS

Answer 1

There shouldn't be any issue removing a management server from the notification resource pool.
You're seeing the error coming from your first MS because it's the one currently "elected" to run that particular workflow in the resource pool.

About the error itself, it looks like it's purely a SMTP error, or maybe a network issue but nothing to do with SCOM... You should talk to your messaging admin ;)

Answer 2

Thank you Cryil, I will remove the mgmt server and see what the result is.

Tony

Answer 3

"Cyril", apologies.

Answer 4

What are you using to send email? Exchange? Unix Relay? Our relays will allow anon send if the sending IP address is white listed. When I see the destination refused connection on SMTP, that tells me that the email relay refused the connection from one of your management servers.

You can test this with telnet or posh.

telnet (from each management server):

telnet IP.OF.MAIL.SERVER 25

If you get a connection you know the SMTP server is accepting connections from your management server on port 25.

POSH:

test-netconnection IP.OF.MAIL.SERVER -Port 25

Should come back with TCPTESTSucceeded: True

Answer 5

Afternoon,

I am sending through an exchange mail relay using this script, from my SCOM 2012R2 environment since this version of SCOM does not support an "external authenticated email destination.
https://monitoringguys.com/2014/08/04/scom-enhanced-email-notification-script-version-2-1/
I test the connection with this initially:
test-netconnection mailservername -port 25
which comes back ok.
then I generate a Test event ID 101, informational, in SCOM, for which I have a subscription running for just that event that gets sent to my emaiaddress.

TS