Every backup job or system alert in Backup Radar has a result type. The result type determines how Backup Radar monitors, evaluates, and reports the data it receives from your backup applications.

In the legacy Backup Radar experience, the Backup Type field determines whether a job is treated as a Backup or a System Alert. You can customize the Backup Type field when you activate or edit backups and configure templates.

For more details about the Backup Type drop-down, including its function and best practices, see About backup settings.

Backup

A Backup is a scheduled job that monitors the status of your backups directly.

Backup Radar expects results on a recurring schedule and can report these statuses:

• Success: The backup completed successfully.

• Warning: The backup completed with a warning.

• Failure: The backup was attempted but unsuccessful.

• No Result: Backup Radar didn’t receive a result on a day when the backup was scheduled to run.

Most jobs in Backup Radar are configured as Backups. Backup Radar assigns the Backup result type when the vendor provides both successful and failed results. Warnings are optional.

Because Backups follow a schedule, Backup Radar can identify days when it doesn’t receive data. This helps you find gaps in your backup coverage.

As a general rule, jobs that can produce a Success status are assigned the Backup Result Type.

System Alert

A System Alert is an unscheduled job that typically reports failures or warnings instead of successes.

System Alerts are commonly used to monitor backup-adjacent items such as:

• Disk utilization.

• Disk health.

• Hardware alerts.

• Last check-in alerts.

• Agent status alerts.

You can also use a System Alert to monitor a backup when the backup vendor doesn’t provide successful results. A System Alert generates a ticket when it receives a failure, rather than when Backup Radar doesn’t receive a result. This helps prevent false failures and unnecessary ticket noise for jobs that report only when something goes wrong.

System Alerts never report a No Result status because they aren’t schedule-driven. A System Alert remains in its last known result state until it receives a new result or you manually add one. If the last result was a Failure or Warning, that status remains until you add a Success result from the Daily Activity page.

After you add a Success result, the System Alert retains that status until it receives another Failure or Warning from the vendor.

Key differences

Result types and Backup Plans

When you create a Backup Plan, you configure whether it ingests Backups or System Alerts.

This choice affects the rest of your Backup Plan configuration:

• Backup Plans configured for Backups include scheduling, SLA definition, and RPO settings.

• Backup Plans configured for System Alerts skip the Schedule and SLA steps because System Alerts aren’t schedule-driven.

• You can’t mix Backups and System Alerts in the same Backup Plan.

If your backup vendor produces both result types, create a separate Backup Plan for each one. For example, you might use one plan for a primary backup that reports successes and failures and another plan for a disk health alert that reports only failures.

Backup Radar automatically assigns the correct Result Type for most vendors and applications. If a job appears to have the wrong Result Type, contact our support team for assistance.