On each of the six Macintosh computers that I manage, I have a number of tools and utilities running which perform regular duties. Carbon Copy Cloner keeps attached bootable backup drives current. Arq keeps cloud backups current. ChronoSync periodically updates some specific archives, etc. etc.
Each of these utilities can notify me by email when they’ve done their job. But its tiring to spend a part of every morning deleting those 10 so daily notifications, and when you receive so many, it’s all too easy to overlook a particular missing notification.
Each of these utilities can also be configured to only email me in case of problems. But in my experience, there are some operationally blocking problems they can run into which they don’t self-recognize—sometimes resulting in months going by without me noticing.
What I need is a notification system that reliably alerts me when things aren’t normal. Such a system would receive those periodic email notifications from my various apps and utilities, and would notify me whenever they didn’t receive them on the expected periodicity.
Anybody know of such a service?
(Useful notifications is, by the way, one of the reasons I really like the CrashPlan service. They send me a weekly summary, showing the backup status of all my Macs running CrashPlan, and then send me timely alerts anytime a given Mac hasn’t been backed up within the past three days.)
