Database Management

SQL Sentry Email Alert Not Received - Troubleshooting Steps

The purpose of this how-to article is to cover a very common technical issue reported regarding a condition being configured and the SQL Sentry User did not receive an alert when the condition. In this article troubleshooting steps for 'Send Email' actions will be covered.

First published date

12/6/2023 10:54 PM

Last published date

3/6/2025 4:18 PM

Overview

In the realm of database management, timely alerts are the first line of defense against critical/non-critical system failures. For example, if a database administrator isn't promptly notified of a SQL Server Instance going offline, the repercussions can be detrimental.

Configuring Actions & Alerts for specified Conditions of a SQL Sentry Monitoring environment are straightforward, but in the event that a Condition is evaluated to True, and an Alert was not received it is important to investigate to ensure you get the most out of this SQL Sentry Feature.

SQL Sentry Actions & Alerts Overview

Product section

SQL Sentry (SQLS)

Resolution

Troubleshooting Steps:
  1. Check the Actions Log and filter it to ensure the Condition in question was triggered.image.pngimage.png
  2. If you can verify in the Actions Log that the Condition was triggered for an Alert with the 'Send Email' Action, it is a good idea to validate if there are any issues in the SMTP Logs within your internal server environment (SMTP is the protocol used in sending emails)
    1. You can also use the Test feature in the SMTP setup to ensure that the mail server is accepting mail from the Monitoring Service host machine. You would want to run this test within the client on each machine that hosts a Monitoring Service to ensure this works for them all.
  3. Review the Action Settings for the Condition(s) in question to cross reference recipients to receive the alert between the Users and/or Groups Configurations. For example, if you have 3 recipients for a triggered alert that displays in the Actions Log that were supposed to receive an email alert, you can perform a few tests by checking each recipient individually with any Condition you are comfortable with triggering intentionally for testing purposes. Using my example of 3 recipients, you would perform 3 individual tests against the same Condition against each recipient separately and then compare results for each test to see if any one of the recipients received it when configured by itself to narrow down to the problematic recipient.image.png