Sending alerts with Database Mail

Question

I've been looking into SQL Server alerts and it looks like I need to enable database mail on the server to be able to send e-mail alerts. The other solution appears to be to send those events to another server which already sends e-mail alerts (for log shipping), but in this case it appears that all alerts will be sent to the 'other' server.

Are there any reasons that I shouldn't enable database mail on the server generating alerts?

What might be the negative implications of sending all those alerts to another server to send e-mails?

In short, what do I need to look out for and which method is suggested?

Answer 1

Very happily, MS-SQL's mailer does support SMTP-Auth, so it is smart enough to actually log in to the SMTP server before sending mail. As a mail admin, this makes me happy.

The only downside is regular old email overload, or if the server generates so many alerts that it somehow overloads the mailer (unlikely).