Feature Request - Backup Storage Consumption Reports

[MSweetman]

Hi,
As an MSP & Hosting organisation, we happily use Veeam, for quite some time, to protect customer systems. As part of our Backup & Recovery Management systems we need to be able to track backup storage consumption.
The VeeamONE Backup Billing template is great and we have used it with great success however, this does not address all the requirements.

The Scope we use for the Report is all the repositories for each Customer and the time period is Last Month. This works well.

Typically there are Backup Jobs and Backup Copy Jobs, which is best practice for achieving good performance in merging, and having the retention's working in a GFS method.
Backup Jobs go to one Customer Repository and Backup Copy Jobs go to a separate Customer Repository. Again this is a recommended practice fro performance.

The Backup Billing Lists by jobs and shows the machines and their restore point size for each day which is not relevant

Is it possible just to have Repository Name and the Total Consumed Space? This is all the information that is actually required for a Billing report where customers pay for storage on a monthly basis.

Secondly, In many cases a customers backups will be spread across a number of repositories. While there is the ability to select multiple repositories for the customer report, which is great, there is no summation for all repositories.
This makes report viewing tedious as you need to sit with a calculator and add all the individual totals. (This annoys management).

Lastly, we are now using a HP StoreOnce appliance with full Catalyst over FC. This is now also working well. We followed Veeam & HPE's Best Practice guide and it is now our long term repository for the GFS based Backup Copy Jobs.
The Dedupe is great and the performance is reasonable however, reporting is another thing.
As stated previously, we need to report on consumed storage by Customer. We cannot find anyway to do this where the all backup Copy jobs go to the one catalyst store. Note: The backup copy Jobs are separated by customer and there is one catalyst store as per best practice document.

Hope product management can assist with expediting a favourable resolution.

Kind Regards....Mark

[Shestakov]

Hi Mark,

Is it possible just to have Repository Name and the Total Consumed Space? This is all the information that is actually required for a Billing report where customers pay for storage on a monthly basis.

Yes it is.
Check Backup Infrastructure Custom Data report with Object type = Backup Server and desired columns.

Secondly, In many cases a customers backups will be spread across a number of repositories. While there is the ability to select multiple repositories for the customer report, which is great, there is no summation for all repositories.
This makes report viewing tedious as you need to sit with a calculator and add all the individual totals. (This annoys management).

If we add total size of backups on all repositories to the Backup Billing report summary, will that help?
Thanks!

[MSweetman]

Hi Shestakov,

Thank you for the quick response. I have been experimenting with the Backup Infrastructure Custom Data template and the results are promising. Using Scope = Backup Server and Columns = Repository Name, Repository Full Backup Size & Repository Inc Backup Size with a Custom Filter= Repository Name includes "Customer" we get a Details panel showing the correct information which includes the multiple repositories. This addresses the first two requirements. All that is required is to add FULL + INC Size values to get Repository: Total (GB), horizontally and a Total for all Repositories. I've manually added the totals in excel from the report to achieve the results required. This covers Backup Jobs and Backup Copy Jobs to conventional repositories. Hopefully, this is just a manual workaround and that the VeeamONE Repoter can include creating totals for columns.

Now for the elephant in the room... The HP StoreOnce repository. As previously mentioned we are now sending the individual Customer Backup Copy Jobs to the HP StoreOnce Catalyst Repository. Just adding the StoreOnce Repository to the above report will give distorted results as it will include all data.

The only report that we can run is the Backup Copy GFS Files Report. As we know which Backup copy job goes to which repository we can select the "Customer" BU Copy Jobs. This works as the Summary Page Shows the Used Space, Page 2 shows BU Copy Job 2 with it's used space, Page 3 shows BU Copy Job 3 etc, however the last page shows all Restore Points with no Jobs. This last section is not restricted to the specific customer, it's all machines and includes the used space. This used space get added to the summary Used Space on page 1 which also distorts the true Used space.

So get around the reporting where the StoreOnce is the repository, we need to find a way to Combine the Backup Infrastructure Custom Data report for The conventional repository and the GFS Copy Files Report and exclude the Restore Points with No Jobs section.

Thanks....Mark

[Shestakov]

All that is required is to add FULL + INC Size values to get Repository: Total (GB), horizontally and a Total for all Repositories.

The thing is all data is provided as text so simple summation is not possible in current configuration. Same time some parameters are text ones, like Repository name, some provide dates (last backup date) etc. So embedded summation doesn`t seem like a useful option.
As for Total backup size(Fulls+Increments) for repository, that`s a great request. We will add Total backup size in next versions. Thanks!

Just adding the StoreOnce Repository to the above report will give distorted results as it will include all data.

I don`t have StoreOnce in my lab, could you provide a screenshot or just describe why results will be distorted?

Thanks!

[MSweetman]

Hi Nikita,
I have sent you details via email.
Thanks you ...Mark

[Shestakov]

Thanks Mark.
The feedback is really useful.

[MSweetman]

Hi Nikita,
Many thanks for the interest in our reporting needs.
I have opened support case 02382023 for the Total used Space (GB) including recover points not related to the selection criteria.
We hope to see these enhancements in the next update.
Again Thank you.....Mark

[Shestakov]

Good to know.
Thanks for sharing the case number. I`ll chime in if my assistance is needed.