It's not possible. Simple as that.
VDR is not capable of doing something as ``sophisticated'' as sending emails about (un)successful backups. I couldn't even find a logfile on the filesystem of the appliance that I could parse with a script or something.
I thought that some kind of logs from vdr a here:
root@localhost:~# cd /var/vmware/datarecovery/
chunkDedupe-0.log Config10.dat operations_log.utx VMDRExec.dir/
chunkDedupe-9.log datarecovery-0.log vcbAPI-0.log
chunkDedupe-index datarecovery-9.log vcbAPI-9.log
Config10.bak datarecovery-index vcbAPI-index
If you're not familar with Linux...you need to get familar!
I don't mean to sound condescending, I'm a LInux Novice/Intermediate, also. I'm comfortable enough to manage a Linux system, write scripts, and troubleshoot. There many resources on the web to help orient you to using Linux...google "linux tutorial".
Even if someone here could give you a script to parse and e-mail the file, you shouldn't just accept it without understanding it. ...just my advice...
As far as the concept goes...I'm with you...WHY DIDN'T THEY INCLUDE SOME TYPE OF ERROR NOTIFICATION?!? I'll you why...VDR is an immature backup product that, at best, is rudimentary. I'm confident that in a few years, it could be the premier backup solution for VMs. Until then you better find another solution and let VDR "bake-in-the-oven" a bit longer.
Did you ever come up with a solution to this problem? I'm in the process of writing a script for this but would be interested in how other people solved it. For my script all i want to get in email is Succes or Failure followed by the server name. Looking at the log file I think this is doable. What did you end up with?
-Gunnar
Look at this thread: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/252977