Email channel setup clarification

[satoshidba]

Hi @DavidWiseman

I've got my estate into a more manageable state and was going to look at enabling alerts now - stumbling at the first step though in getting email notifications sent:

`Operation timed out after 120000 milliseconds

Details:

System.TimeoutException: Operation timed out after 120000 milliseconds
---> System.Threading.Tasks.TaskCanceledException: A task was canceled.
at MailKit.Net.NetworkStream.ReadAsync(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at MailKit.Net.NetworkStream.ReadAsync(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
at MailKit.Net.Smtp.SmtpStream.ReadAheadAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
at MailKit.Net.Smtp.SmtpStream.ReadResponseAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
at MailKit.Net.Smtp.SmtpClient.PostConnectAsync(Stream stream, String host, Int32 port, SecureSocketOptions options, Boolean starttls, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
at MailKit.Net.Smtp.SmtpClient.ConnectAsync(String host, Int32 port, SecureSocketOptions options, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
at DBADash.Alert.EmailNotificationChannel.InternalSendNotificationAsync(Alert alert, String connectionString) in D:\a\dba-dash\dba-dash\DBADash\Alert\EmailNotificationChannel.cs:line 93
at DBADashGUI.DBADashAlerts.NotificationChannelBase.SendNotificationAsync(Alert alert, String connectionString) in D:\a\dba-dash\dba-dash\DBADash\Alert\NotificationChannelBase.cs:line 85
at DBADashGUI.DBADashAlerts.NotificationChannelBase.SendNotificationAsync(Alert alert, String connectionString) in D:\a\dba-dash\dba-dash\DBADash\Alert\NotificationChannelBase.cs:line 91
at DBADashGUI.DBADashAlerts.AlertConfig.ChannelGrid_CellContentClick(Object sender, DataGridViewCellEventArgs e) in D:\a\dba-dash\dba-dash\DBADashGUI\DBADashAlerts\AlertConfig.cs:line 346
$

DBA Dash 3.27.0.0
Date: 21/07/2025 17:06:16 +01:00`

I'm in a pretty restrictive environment for permissions so there may need to be some whitelisting required for using an SMTP relay with anonymous authentication. Where is the mail actually sent from? Is it the client device that the GUI is running on or does it use the server that the service is located on or even the repository database?

Thanks

[DavidWiseman]

It's the DBA Dash service that sends the emails. If you have multiple services, it will negotiate one of the services to process the alerts. You have the option to disable alert processing to control which service is used to process the alerts.

https://dbadash.com/docs/help/alerts/#service-config-tool

The service will need to be able to communicate with the email server. You could use telnet to check if you can connect to the specified port from where the service is running.

[satoshidba]

Thanks, I'll try to restrict it to one of them to at least get it working.

I have three services at the moment to handle my instance coverage in multiple environments - if I keep it disabled on all but one, will the alerts from an instance that doesn't have a data source/connection on that server work?

[DavidWiseman]

Yes, it will work. The alert processing is done for all instances, and it's only ever handled by a single service at a time. If a service is down for a period of time, another service will take over processing alerts. If you restrict it to a single service, it will still process alerts for all servers.

[satoshidba]

@DavidWiseman

I'm now able to send test emails from the servers with the server using Send-MailMessage in Powershell however I'm still getting the timeout message above through DBADash. I'm going to try to get the service set up on a pre-existing server that didn't have any issues but if you have any other ideas on troubleshooting I'd be all ears.

Thanks