Clients and devices

A client is a customer whose backups you watch. Each one has its own report address, SLA target, contacts and backup jobs. Devices are the servers and appliances those backups protect, with their details, logins and photos kept in one place.

Adding a client

Open Clients and choose Add client. The wizard has four steps:

1. Basics: the client's name, its SLA tier and, if you need one, a custom SLA target.
2. Contact: an optional primary contact.
3. Notes: a compliance note and internal notes. Both are for your team only and do not change monitoring.
4. Review: check the details and Create client.

When the client is created, the wizard shows its address. Point the client's backup software at it, or follow the setup guide for the product. Clients are unlimited on every plan: you pay for backup jobs, not for clients.

SLA tiers and targets

The tier sets a default success-rate target for the client and badges it across the dashboard:

If a client has a different agreement, enter a Custom SLA target instead. It replaces the tier's default for that client. You can change the tier and the target later from the client's page.

How SLA this month is calculated

The client list shows each client's success rate for the current month next to its target. It is the same rule as the monthly client report:

• Success rate = OK reports ÷ all reports received this month.
• Warnings are not successes. A backup that completed with warnings counts against the rate.
• A client with no reports yet this month shows "—", never 100%.
• When the rate is under the target, the client is flagged as below its SLA target, and the page heading counts how many are.

Contacts and on-call

The Contacts tab of a client holds the people you deal with there: name, role (free text), email, phone and an On-call flag. Name and email are required.

The on-call flag marks who to reach when something breaks. On its own it sends nothing. To have those people emailed:

1. Mark one or more contacts as on-call, each with an email address.
2. On the client's Settings tab, in Alerts, tick Also email this client's on-call contacts when a backup fails or goes missing.

From then on, when one of the client's backups fails or turns Missing, the alert is also emailed to up to five of its on-call contacts. Warnings are not sent to them. Only owners and admins can turn this on or off. The same card lists which of your alert channels cover the client, so you can see where its problems go. See Alerts and channels.

Pausing and archiving

Both are on the client's Settings tab, under Monitoring.

Pause turns monitoring off for every backup of the client, for planned maintenance or a client on hold. Choose how long:

• Until I resume it: stays paused until someone chooses Reactivate.
• For 24 hours
• For 7 days
• Until a date: up to one year ahead. Monitoring resumes at the start of that day.

While a client is paused, its reports are still stored and still update each job's status, but no job turns Missing and no alert is sent. When it resumes, the clocks restart from that moment. See Paused clients.

Archive stops monitoring and alerts and hides the client from the client list. Nothing is deleted: choose Reactivate to bring it back. A paused or archived client's backup jobs still count towards your plan's job limit until you delete them.

The client address

Each client gets one address for its report emails, shown on the client's Settings tab and in Settings → Client addresses. It looks like this:

harbour-it-northwind-dental-3f9a1c2b7d4e8f60@ingest.backupsentinel.io

The address is created for you and cannot be edited. A backup job can also have its own address, shown in the job's details. Client addresses explains which to use and how a report finds its backup.

Devices

Devices are the servers, NAS units and appliances your backups protect. Find them under Backup jobs → Devices, or on a client's Devices tab. Choose Add device to create one.

A device record holds:

• Name and Type, and optionally the client it belongs to.
• Hostname, Local address, Remote address and Admin console URL.
• Manufacturer, Model, Serial number, OS or firmware, Location and Warranty ends.
• Notes: quirks, change windows, how to reach it out of hours.

The built-in types are Windows Agent, Linux Agent, Veeam Server, SQL Instance and NAS Device. If none fits, type your own: a workspace can have up to 30 custom types.

Devices are free and unlimited on every plan. They never count as backup jobs.

Device logins

A device can hold up to 25 logins, each with a label, username, password and notes.

• Passwords are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they are stored.
• Only owners and admins can reveal a password. Members can add logins but not read them back.
• Every reveal is recorded in the activity log, with who revealed which device's login.
• Stored passwords are left out of the full data export.

Photos

Add photos of the rack, labels or cabling to a device: up to 12 per device, PNG, JPEG, WebP or GIF, up to 5 MB each. Photos are kept in private storage, not on a public link.

Limits

• On-call contacts are emailed only when a backup fails or turns Missing. Warnings, escalations and recovery notices go to your alert channels only.
• At most five on-call contacts per client are emailed.
• A client cannot be deleted from the dashboard. Archive it instead; its data is kept.
• Paused and archived clients' jobs still count towards the plan's job limit.