Feedback and Feature Requests

[Gostev]

Please let us know your opinion about the product, and what features would you like to see in the future versions of this product...

While Veeam Business View is already quite useful, we perfectly realize that it is very much "1.0" release in terms of features. Actually, one of the reasons for making this product free was so that we could start gathering larger amounts of feedback and understand what is really needed.

Please pay us back with your feedback

[mhanbury]

Hi,

Very useful free tool Thank You!

Any chance we can get the Guest OS Field listed on the output report?

[Gostev]

Hello, this should be easy to add. Thank you for your feedback!

[jgremillion]

I like this tool and find it useful. I would like to recommended an enhancement to the rules. I would be nice if there was a rule to search for "does not contain."

Thanks.

[Gostev]

Feedback on automated matching rules is most appreciated.

Frankly, we have ran out of ideas (and time) on rules - so we released 1.0 with just a few of them - really hoping that we will be able to get more feedback on what is really needed, a soon as people will actually start using the product.

[mhanbury]

Rules to filter on the following would be a really good start:

1. Guest OS Type.
2. Datastore.
3. Resource Pool.
4. VM State.

[jgremillion]

I agree. Being able to filter on Guest OS Type, Datastore , Resource pool and VM state is good. I would also add folders (especially folders in VMs and Templates view).

Keep up the good work! I can't wait to see the next iteration.

[simmetje]

Hi, we offer our internal customers 3 types of storage; gold, silver and bronze. The name of the storagetype is included in the lun name on the ESX servers. A sample of a lun name is: SAN_BRONZE_05. Every type of storage has a different price as the underlaying storage is replicated, raid1, raid5 etc.

What I need in the BV product is a way of reporting type of storage per vm and per departement. So in the dashboard view where I now have the labels "Name / VM / vCPU / Memory,GB / Storage,GB" I would like some customization as Bronze Storage, Silver Storage etc. I can imagine that is a bit difficult as the labels are now preconfigured. I would be very happy if the workspace view would have the possibility to fill 3 colums with a rule to add Bronze Storage, Silver Storage etc. counters. I'm not really interested in the datastore name, but more if the datastore contains the words gold, silver or bronze.

[Gostev]

Rob, please help me understand why you cannot do the following: create new category "Storage Type" with the following groups: "Gold", "Silver" and "Bronze", and classify all customers' with this category. This way you will be able to filter and build reports based on storage type with the current version.

[simmetje]

Rob, please help me understand why you cannot do the following: create new category "Storage Type" with the following groups: "Gold", "Silver" and "Bronze", and classify all customers' with this category. This way you will be able to filter and build reports based on storage type with the current version.

You're right with that. But that would be a manual action to perform. If a user would change from bronze to silver storage, the description (custom attribute) would have to be changed manually. I real life some administrator would forget the change and the customer will be billed wrong.

If I could make a query/rule for the storage lun name to contain bronze, silver or gold, it would be an automatic action.

[Gostev]

Ah, I understand your scenario now. Thanks for clarification. Yes, we already have datastore-based rules in our plans for the next release.

[tjestr]

It would be great if you can rule by custom attributes.
Another thing are the graphs. If you have more than 5 items, the graphs are cut at the right edge. (Instead of uncategorized there is sth. like "unka")
We use up to 12 items in graphs so it would be really great to see some improvement there.

Additionally the attributes VM, vCPU, Memory and Storage should be summed up in the graph's chart.

[Gostev]

Falko, can you please upload the screenshot with graphs cut at the right edge so that I can better understand the issue? We are working on the update release right now, so we should be able to implement some of this feedback.

[tjestr]

Hi Anton,

following the screenshots:

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/3280/bview1.jpg
http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/4554/bview2.jpg

[Gostev]

Falko, thanks for the screenshot. Second one seems to have simple resolution, we should probaby rename Uncategorized to N/A. Current name for this label is just too long.

Not sure about good solution for first one though, there could be just too many groups indeed... say, 25. And they will never be able to fit in the screen. Should we limit the displayed groups to say top 7, show all other as Other (summarized), plus show uncategorized separately of course?

[tjestr]

I thinkt it would be best to let the user choose how many groups will be displayed. (My screen is big enough to show 12 groups, for others that's maybe too much.) I would prefer a second (or third...) graph at the buttom of the first graph's chart instead of summarizing it.

[Vitaliy S.]

Falko,

That makes sence for sure, I don't think it will be hard to implement this option which will filter the groups. And as Anton has already said, we could only show TOP groups for your environment by default.

[tjestr]

Another thing I've recognized is the Storage,GB chart row. Currently it shows the provisioned space. It would be great if you can add another row with the used space.
I know that this is a highly dynamic value, but it would be interesting to know. The same for memory. (allocated memory & active memory)

[tjestr]

Another thing which came into my mind is, that it would be great if the Business View website could be implemented in Backup Enterprise Manager website (maybe as additional tabs).
Maybe you could think of a website for Veeam Monitor too to have a full, web enabled toolset available.

[Gostev]

Falko, this is interesting idea we have to think about it. Backup Enterprise Manager website already has quite a few tabs (will have more in the next release), so I am not sure if adding other product's tabs will look good - too many unrelated tabs on the same "level" will probably be confusing.

[tjestr]

Any news on a release date of the new version?

[Gostev]

We will release update release shortly (along with Reporter 4.0), but in parallel we are already working on major update and plan to release it in a few months.

[FloonDog]

BV needs to sync with VC custom fields, not just populate them. Editing in VC is so much easier since you can cut and paste and use the arrows to move from field to field vs bring up the slow BV interface and changing each server one by one. I also have existing fields with data I would love to have in BV where I could report on them, but there is no way to get the data into BV. It's a great 1.0 product, looking forward to more polish in 2.0.

[Gostev]

Any chance we can get the Guest OS Field listed on the output report?

I like this tool and find it useful. I would like to recommended an enhancement to the rules. I would be nice if there was a rule to search for "does not contain."

These were implemented in 1.0.3, enjoy!

[MB-NS]

Falko, this is interesting idea we have to think about it. Backup Enterprise Manager website already has quite a few tabs (will have more in the next release), so I am not sure if adding other product's tabs will look good - too many unrelated tabs on the same "level" will probably be confusing.

Hello, what would be nice is integration with Veeam B&R jobs (not only with enterprise Manager).
I find myself having to create a log of folders in VC in order to have a dynamic job :
- a root folder to include VM in the job
- subfolders to select which VM should have VSS integration or not, or with specific Windows accounts

These requirements interferes with other needs (VM visibility in the tree) and thus are not ideal.
Being able to select VM by Groups or Categories would be best, especially as it would avoid Veeam the need to implement similar features for B&R (which I am sure were asked).

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Mathieu,

Yes, we've been thinking about integration of Veeam Backup and Replication with Business View, I believe we will be able to implement it in our future releases of VBR, but thanks for a great feedback!

[MB-NS]

Hello Mathieu,

Yes, we've been thinking about integration of Veeam Backup and Replication with Business View, I believe we will be able to implement it in our future releases of VBR, but thanks for a great feedback!

Hello, are we talking about something like VBR 5.0.1 or 5.1, or more like VBR 6 ?

[Gostev]

Hello, more like future releases.

[PHBG]

Hello,
in the Business View I found some misunderstanding in a Host Tab about CPU Frequency calculation.
There is nothing about core number info. CPU Frequency (GHz) is not very true, because is not calculated the number of CPU (sockets) and number of Cores per CPU (only number of host). And very powerful host seems like a poor CPU resource host.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Petar,

Thanks for the feedback, as for now you may want to create additional host category that will automatically categorize your hosts based on the CPU cores number, so you could have an accurate picture.