Scenario

One great feature of SQL Server is the ability to get alerts when there are issues.  The alert process can send email notifications using Database Mail after you have configured your SMTP settings and setup your jobs and alerts to use this account.  In some cases you may not have a mail server, but still want to setup alerts.  In this tip we will walk through how you can setup Database Mail to use email services like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc…

Solution

For this example, I have a SQL Server test environment configured and I want to test the alert mechanism using Hotmail. The following outlines the settings to do this. Continue reading Database mail setup for Gmail,Hotmail,Yahoo or AOL →