Reporting and Notifications

3 min read

Snapshot Master emails admins when snapshot operations complete or fail, and provides activity reports for audit and capacity planning.

Where to configure

Click the Notifications tab in the left navigation, then the Email settings subsection.

Set up email delivery

SMTP server — your outbound mail server hostname.
Port — typically 587 (STARTTLS) or 25 (internal relay).
From address — what shows in recipients' inboxes.
Username / password — SMTP credentials, if your mail server requires authenticated relay.
Send test email — confirms the configuration before relying on it for real alerts.

What can trigger an email

Per schedule (see scheduling), tick which events fire emails:

Snapshot created successfully — receipt of each run. Useful early in a deployment when you want confirmation; usually turned off once the schedule is stable to reduce noise.
Snapshot creation failed — leave on permanently. Failures often mean a VM is in an unexpected state or a host is under pressure.
Snapshot deletion by retention — when the retention rule trims a snapshot. Off by default; turn on if compliance requires explicit notification.
Schedule run summary — one consolidated email per scheduled run rather than per-VM.

Recipients are configured per schedule, so different teams can be notified about different VM scopes.

Activity reports

The Reports tab generates summary reports across a chosen date range. Available reports:

Snapshot activity by VM — how many snapshots were taken / deleted per VM in the period.
Snapshot activity by schedule — which schedules ran, how many successes / failures.
Failure summary — every failed snapshot operation with VM, time, error reason.
Storage consumption by snapshot — disk space currently held by snapshots per VM (where the platform exposes this metric).

Reports export to PDF, Word, or CSV. The CSV export is useful for downstream pivot work; PDF/Word for management hand-off.

The full history of snapshot operations — manual or scheduled, success or failure — is in the Activity Log tab. Filter by VM, schedule, operator, or date range. Each entry shows what was attempted, who triggered it (named operator or system schedule), and the outcome.

Use the audit log when answering "did our team take a snapshot before they applied the patch on Tuesday night?" — the log is the authoritative answer.