SMTP authentication is absolutely required on Veritas System Recovery 18 when sending SMTP notification.

Problem

SMTP authentication is required on Veritas System Recovery 18 when sending SMTP notification.

Cause

This is by design. SMTP notification cannot be sent without SMTP authentication from Veritas System Recovery (VSR) 18.

Solution

A user name and password must be provided for SMTP authentication. (See Figure 1)

Figure 1

VSR 18 Service Pack 1 (18.0.1) allows SMTP email to be sent successfully when the Encryption Type is set to None.  There is currently no way to specify the authentication method to be used when Encryption Type is set to None.  Instead, the authentication method used by VSR to send the SMTP email is based on the highest level of authentication allowed by the SMTP server.  The user name and password are ignored only if the SMTP server does not have authentication features enabled.  In this condition, any user name and password can be specified in the UI (Figure 1).

If anonymous authentication is required with the Encryption Type set to None, configure the SMTP server to only allow Anonymous sends from the computers running VSR 18 SP1.  This can typically be accomplished by creating a "scoped receive connector" on the SMTP server to specify the rules to be used when SMTP send requests are received from specific IP addresses.  The scoped receive connector should be set to only allow Anonymous authentication, and the IP addresses of all VSR computers should be added to this connector's scope.  In this way, as the SMTP server does not allow any authentication method other than Anonymous, when VSR sends an SMTP email it will only be able to send with Anonymous authentication and the user name and password entered in the UI will be ignored.  NOTE: A user name and password is still required to be entered in the SMTP Email settings in VSR, but it will not be used if the SMTP server only allows Anonymous sends from computer running VSR.

Veritas Technologies LLC currently plans to address this issue by way of a patch or hotfix to the current version of the software. Please be sure to refer back to this document periodically as any changes to the status of the issue will be reflected here. A link to the patch or hotfix download will be added to this document when it becomes available. Please note that Veritas Technologies LLC reserves the right to remove any fix from the targeted release if it does not pass quality assurance tests.  Veritas’ plans are subject to change and any action taken by you based on the above information or your reliance upon the above information is made at your own risk.