Background

Jocha work with a lot of startup companies and small-business owners, which is great in so many ways. While it gives us the possibility to design and set everything up from scratch, with all the best practices, it usually means working with a smaller budget compared to the larger corporations.

Windows Backup is a great built-in feature in Windows Server, however it lacks a useful reporting feature. We’ve built a PowerShell-script that will give you a nice report summary of the last backup job. As always we recommend using the last version of Windows Management Framework for this script.

Requirements

– Elevated PowerShell-session.
– Windows Server Backup feature installed.
– At least Windows Management Framework 3.0

Solution

By using built-in functions and leveraging scripts and third-party products you can save a lot of money.
This PowerShell-script will retrieve the last backup job send an email with a report of the results.

Example: Report from a failed job

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Windows Backup Mail Report
Written by Joakim, http://jocha.se
.DESCRIPTION
Version 4.1 - Updated 2016-05-31
This script will mail a report from the latest Windows Backup job, can also fetch and generate reports from remote servers. The script requires at least PowerShell v3.
.EXAMPLE
To automate this script, setup a scheduled task.
    Name: Backup Email Task
    Description: Notifies backup admin of scheduled backup status
    Run whether user is logged on or not
    Trigger > On event > Log=Microsoft-Windows-Backup/Operational > Source=Backup > Event ID(s)= 4,5,8,9,17,22,49,50,52,100,517,518,521,527,528,544,545,546,561,564,612
    Action: Start a Program
        Program: Powershell
        Arguments: -Command "C:\Scripts\WBJobReport.ps1" -ExecutionPolicy Bypass
#>

Add-PSSnapin Windows.ServerBackup -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

#######################################
#-------- Variables to change --------#

# Uncomment the two rows below and row 207 to enable "Remote Report" generation.
#$Servers = New-PSSession -Computername Server01, Server02, Server03
#Invoke-Command -Session $Servers {

# Set your Company name
$Company = "MyCompany"
 
# Set the recipient/sender email-address
$MailTo = "[email protected]"
$MailFrom = "$Company Backup <[email protected]>"

# SMTP user account password
$MailUser = "MyUser"
$MailPassword = "MyPassword" 

# SMTP Server
$MailServer = "smtpserver.company.com"
 
# SMTP Port
$MailPort = 587
 
# If your server uses SSL, otherwise set to $false
$UseSSL = $true
 
#---- Don't change anything below ----#
#######################################

Try {
$CurrentTime = (Get-Date).ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm")
$Computer = Get-Content env:computername
$WBJob = Get-WBJob -Previous 1
$WBSummary = Get-WBSummary
$WBLastSuccess = ($WBSummary.LastSuccessfulBackupTime).ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm")
$WBResult = $WBSummary.LastBackupResultHR
$WBErrorMsg = $WBJob.ErrorDescription + "`n" + $WBSummary.DetailedMessage
$WBStartTime = $WBJob.StartTime
$WBEndTime = $WBJob.EndTime
$WBDuration = (New-TimeSpan -Start $WBStartTime -End $WBEndTime)

$Password = ConvertTo-SecureString $MailPassword -AsPlainText -Force
$Credentials = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ($MailUser, $Password)

Function FormatBytes
{
	Param
	(
		[System.Int64]$Bytes
	)
	[string]$BigBytes = ""
	#Convert to TB
	If ($Bytes -ge 1TB) {$BigBytes = [math]::round($Bytes / 1TB, 2); $BigBytes += " TB"}
	#Convert to GB
	ElseIf ($Bytes -ge 1GB) {$BigBytes = [math]::round($Bytes / 1GB, 2); $BigBytes += " GB"}
	#Convert to MB
	ElseIf ($Bytes -ge 1MB) {$BigBytes = [math]::round($Bytes / 1MB, 2); $BigBytes += " MB"}
	#Convert to KB
	ElseIf ($Bytes -ge 1KB) {$BigBytes = [math]::round($Bytes / 1KB, 2); $BigBytes += " KB"}
	#If smaller than 1KB, leave at bytes.
	Else {$BigBytes = $Bytes; $BigBytes += " Bytes"}
	Return $BigBytes
}

Function Log-BackupItems
{
    Param
    (
        [System.String]$Name,
        [System.String]$Status,
        [System.Int64]$Bytes
    )
    $Item = New-Object System.Object;
    $Item | Add-Member -Type NoteProperty -Name "Name" -Value $Name;
    $Item | Add-Member -Type NoteProperty -Name "Status" -Value $Status;
    $Item | Add-Member -Type NoteProperty -Name "Size" -Value (FormatBytes -Bytes $Bytes);
    Return $Item;
}

$results=@()
$WBJob | % {
	$_.JobItems | % {
		$BackupItem = $null
		If ($_.Name -eq 'VolumeList') {
			$_ | % {$_.SubItemList | % {
				$BackupItem = Log-BackupItems -Name $_.Name -Status $_.State -Bytes $_.TotalBytes
				$results += $BackupItem
			}}
		} 
		Else {
			$_ | % {
				$BackupItem = Log-BackupItems -Name $_.Name -Status $_.State -Bytes $_.TotalBytes
				$results += $BackupItem
			}
		}
	}
}

# Change Result of 0 to Success in green text and any other result as Failure in red text
If ($WBResult -eq 0) { $WBResult = "Successful"}
Else {$WBResult = "Failed"}

# Assemble the HTML Report
$HTMLMessage = @"
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
    <head>
    <title>$Company Backup Report for $Computer</title>
    <style>
    body { font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px }
    h3{ clear: both; font-size: 150%; margin-left: 20px;margin-top: 30px; }
    table { padding: 15px 0 20px; width: 500px; text-align: left; }
    td, th { padding: 0 20px 0 0; margin 0; text-align: left; }
    th { margin-top: 15px }
    a, a:visited { color: #2ea3f2; text-decoration: none; }
    #Report { width: 600px; }
    #Successful { color: green }
    #Failed { color: red }
    </style>
    </head>
    <body>
    <div id="Report">
    <p><h3><a href="http://jocha.se">$Company Backup Report for $Computer</a></p></h3>
    <table id="summary"><tbody>
    <tr><td>Todays date:</td>
    <td>$CurrentTime</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Last Successful Backup:</td>
    <td>$WBLastSuccess</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Start time last backup:</td>
    <td>$WBStartTime</td></tr>
    <tr><td>End time last backup:</td>
    <td>$WBEndTime</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Duration last backup:</td>
    <td>$WBDuration</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Backup Result:</td>
    <td><b id="$WBResult">$WBResult</b></td></tr>
    <tr><td>Error Message (if applicable):</td>
    <td>$WBErrorMsg</td></tr></tbody></table>

    $(
	    $html = $results | ConvertTo-HTML -Fragment
	    $xml=[xml]$html
	    $attr=$xml.CreateAttribute('id')
	    $attr.Value='items'
	    $xml.table.Attributes.Append($attr) | out-null
	    $html=$xml.OuterXml | out-string
	    $html
    )
    </div>
    </body>
    </html>
"@

$email = @{
    SMTPServer = $MailServer
    UseSSL = $UseSSL
    BodyAsHtml = $true
    Port = $MailPort
    Credential = $Credentials
    Encoding = ([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8)
    To = $MailTo
    From = $MailFrom
    Subject = "$WBResult Backup on $Computer"
    Body = $HTMLMessage
    }
    Send-MailMessage @email
}

Catch {
    $email = @{
    SMTPServer = $MailServer
    BodyAsHtml = $true
    UseSSL = $UseSSL
    # Port is a PowerShell v3 variable
    Port = $MailPort
    Credential = $Credentials
    Encoding = ([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8)
    To = $MailTo
    From = $MailFrom
    Subject = "Failed Backup on $Computer"
    Body = "The backup script failed to run!"
    }
    Send-MailMessage @email
}
# Uncomment below to enable "Remote Report".
#}

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Please let us know if you have any questions!