HighPoint RocketRAID - how to set up SMTP?

[myrison]

Hi all -

I've got a RocketRaid 4320 and it's been working flawlessly for me for several months now. It also supposedly supports SMTP e-mail notification of events from the controller. However, for the life of me, I cannot get it working with any publicly available e-mail service (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.).

The problem appears to be that HighPoint doesn't support authentication over SSL, which any public mail provider requires at this point. Though the problem could also just be that I'm doing this incorrectly. I opened a ticket with HighPoint 4 months ago without any meaningful response, so I'm hoping someone here can help.

Below is a screenshot of the setup page. Does anyone have this working? If so, please let me know if there is a public mail service I could use for this and how you have it configured. Any pointers are greatly appreciated!

PS: How do you actually embed an image as opposed to having the link show up? Is this something I'm doing wrong or is it the way HardForum posts links to images?

 

[xnoodle]

Do you have to use SSL? As you said yourself, the publicly available SMTP servers require it, so unless Highpoint has newer firmware with SSL capabilities you can't go that route.

Your only other choice is to either use your current providers SMTP server(s) or set up a SMTP server on the local machine.

 

[myrison]

Your only other choice is to either use your current providers SMTP server(s) or set up a SMTP server on the local machine.

Thanks for the response.

My current provider (AT&T) requires SSL for SMTP as well, as well as any other mail service I can find, so I guess I'm just verifying that HighPoint's current SMTP implementation is more or less useless unless you have a reall outdated mail provider. I was also asking if anyone knows of any free service that doesn't require SSL as I could sign up there and have the messages forwarded to my normal mail accounts.

As to putting an SMTP server on my local machine, I could look into that more, but the last time I tried I wasn't able to get it working after a lot of screwing around with it.

Thanks again for the answer, sounds like I just might be out of luck.

 

[xnoodle]

Ahh, I see. AT&T seems to have outsourced their email to Yahoo!, and hence the SSL only requirement.

I'm in the other boat. My provider only provides plaintext SMTP/POP3. SMTP through port 25 doesn't require any authentication as long as you're on-network, and there's port 587 + authentication if you're off.

 

[myrison]

In an attempt to resolve my own problem, I stumbled across stunnel, which looks like it can work for this if you're able to configure it correctly (takes a non-SSL mail on port 25 and translates/encrypts to 465. Thus far, no joy, but I'm not giving up yet.

 

[myrison]

So, stunnel does work to allow gmail to communicate with GMail's SMTP over port 25 (tested via Outlook). Small victory, yeah.

However, the RocketRaid web GUI is still completely unable to send e-mail. In fact, it makes no connection at all that I can see in any logs. Any suggestions for how to troubleshoot this in the HighPoint controller? Logs, etc. that might be generated? The only message it spits out regardless what settings I choose are "Failed to send mail." Frustrating...

Thanks for taking a look.

 

[myrison]

For posterity's sake (and anyone else struggling with this in the future), I figured out that Yahoo does let you send mail via its servers without using encryption. The relevant section is below:

The page here provides instructions confirming that (for now) port 587 is allowed to log in without SSL or TPS.

Click the "This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)" checkbox. (This step is not required if you choose to use port 587.)

I did ultimately get IIS up and running as an SMTP relay on my server as well, I'm not wild about relying on the same host that the array is on to send me an alert in the event of massive failure. The OS doesn't run on this array, but to be safe, I still prefer that the card can send me alerts without relying on the physical host.

One other option I didn't consider originally was to set up an SNMP monitoring service like Kiwi SysLog or Syslog Watcher that will monitor for SNMP messages and can send e-mail alerts based on alerts received. This still relies on the local host to send, but if you can't get a public internet provider to work with the configuration, it is another option.

Oh, and I can't let this thread end without one more mention of HOW HORRIBLE Highpoint's tech support is. I originally opened a ticket on this in December of 2009. As of today, they've yet to provide any meaningful response other than "we think it should work," and "we'll check with engineering and get back to you." Beyond that, they also attempt to close the ticket on me every 3 months without providing any updates. Buyer beware if you end up getting one of these... functionally, I've had no problems, but their support alone is almost a guarantee that I'll never shop there again.

 

[Flapjack]

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but there doesn't seem to be much reason to create a new one when I'm having the exact same problem.

I run an Exchange server, and I still can't get this stupid-ass program to send notification email. I'm wondering if anyone has.

I even created a receive connector in Exchange 2010 that allows anonymous email relay from the IP the HighPoint RAID is on, yet still get "Failed to send mail".

 

[TCM]

Well, what are the client and server talking to each other? "Failed to send mail" is useless. Get tcpdump going!

 

[Flapjack]

Well, what are the client and server talking to each other? "Failed to send mail" is useless. Get tcpdump going!

I got it working. I had to dig through the logs on the mail server. Turns out I never created an email account for my admin login. Duh...