Create Email Alert Notification Channel

Video Lecture

I want to send alerts using Grafana, but I need to first create an alert notification channel.

In this lecture I will create a new channel for email alerts.

If you don't have an SMTP server available, you can install a local send only SMTP server on your Grafana server itself.

sudo apt install mailutils

At the prompt, I choose Internet Site

After the install is finished, I need to configure the Postfix SMTP server.

sudo nano /etc/postfix/main.cf

I edit 2 values at the bottom being,

inet_interfaces = loopback-only
inet_protocols = ipv4

Then restart postfix

sudo systemctl restart postfix

I can test the SMTP server sends emails using

echo "This is the body" | mail -s "This is the subject" -a "FROM:root@your-domain.tld" your@email-address

Next to configure Grafana SMTP settings

sudo nano /etc/grafana/grafana.ini

Find the SMTP specific settings, uncomment and edit

[smtp]
enabled = true
host = localhost:25
skip_verify = true
from_address = admin@[your grafana domain name or ip]
from_name = Grafana

Restart Grafana

sudo service grafana-server restart

Go back into Grafana, into your new Email notification channel settings and try to send a test email.

Check your SPAM folder.

If you have trouble receiving emails at your email provider, then please see my SMTP Troubleshooting page in my Zabbix course at https://sbcode.net/zabbix/setup-smtp/#troubleshooting