You came in to work in the morning. Veeam is open, you check the job list. The backup that started at 2:00 AM failed. Nobody has known for six hours.

This scenario is very familiar to system administrators. Veeam Backup and Replication is one of the most widely used backup solutions in enterprise environments — but there is a critical gap on the notification side.

What Notification Channels Does Veeam Support?

Veeam Backup and Replication supports the following notification methods out of the box:

Phone calls are not on that list. Webhook support has been requested in Veeam forums for years — and the official response from Veeam has consistently been that it is not currently on the roadmap.

Can Veeam Send a Phone Call When a Backup Fails?

Yes — via a PowerShell script.

Veeam can run a custom script when a backup job completes or fails. That script sends an HTTP POST request to the Alertalk API, which then triggers the phone call.

How it works: Veeam Job Failed → PowerShell Script → Alertalk API → Phone Call

When the alarm fires, Alertalk calls the numbers you have defined. It reads out which backup job failed, the server name, and the error status using AI-powered TTS — before you touch a keyboard.

Veeam Notification Channel Comparison

Channel Night Reliability Veeam Support
Email Low Built-in
Syslog Requires monitoring system Built-in
Teams Medium Via webhook
Voice Phone Call High Via PowerShell

Teams notifications work — but if Teams is closed at night or notifications are muted, you will still miss it. Voice calls are not affected by any of that.

Why Is a Backup Failure a Critical Alarm?

Not all alarms are equal. A web service being unreachable for a few minutes may have limited impact. But a backup failure is different.

When a ransomware attack, hardware failure or data loss event occurs, the only option is to roll back to the last healthy backup. If the last backup failed and nobody was notified, there may be no safe point to restore from.

This is why backup failures cannot go unnoticed. Email is not enough.

Which Situations Require a Voice Alert?

Not every Veeam job needs a phone call. But the following situations require immediate attention:

These alarms cannot wait until morning. They need to be caught at night.

Who Is This For?

System administrators, MSP companies and IT departments managing critical infrastructure benefit most from this setup. It makes a particular difference for teams without a dedicated night shift or those running a small on-call rotation.

Veeam One can partially address this gap — but it requires an additional license and complex setup. With PowerShell and Alertalk, the same outcome is achievable in a much simpler and more affordable way.

Setting Up Alertalk with Veeam

The setup on the Veeam side involves a PowerShell script and Advanced Job Settings configuration. For the ready-to-use script and step-by-step guide with screenshots:

Veeam Integration Documentation

The guide covers:

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