Enterprise Manager daily email: incorrect subject info

[davegold]

Hi,

I have Veeam Backup/Recovery + Enterprise Manager 5.0.2.230, and I've noticed that the daily email from EM has different info in the subject versus body text. This is a new install, using defaults.

Any thoughts?

Dave



-----Original Message-----
From: veeamEM@lab.camcom.com [mailto:veeamEM@lab.camcom.com]
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 6:15 PM
To: myemail@hiddendomain.com
Subject: Last 24 hours: 1 Errors, 4 Warnings, 2 Successes

Summary of last sessions for all jobs:
0 Errors, 1 Warnings, 3 Successes

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
https://veeam1:9443/default.aspx

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Dave,

Last 24 hours does not necessarily mean last session. Based on the information provided, looks like you had some of your backup sessions with the last run older than 24 hours, that is why you have different stats in the email. Thanks.

[davegold]

Hi vitaliy,

Your logic makes sense, but the design of the email doesn't. Or rather, it is so unusual that I've had others ask me why it was incorrect.

Suggestion: Add in the "Last 24 Hours" to the body of the email, so they'll see:
From: veeamEM@lab.camcom.com [mailto:veeamEM@lab.camcom.com]
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 6:15 PM
To: myemail@hiddendomain.com
Subject: Last 24 hours: 1 Errors, 4 Warnings, 2 Successes

Last 24 hours backups:
1 Errors, 4 Warnings, 2 Successes

Summary of last sessions for all jobs:
0 Errors, 1 Warnings, 3 Successes

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
https://veeam1:9443/default.aspx

[Vitaliy S.]

Dave, thanks for the suggestion and your feedback, much appreciated.

[brupnick]

[merged]

I have Enterprise Manager configured to send me the daily email report for with my backup statistics. I had removed a bunch of VBR servers from EM, but noticed that the email still seemed to contain the jobs on these servers. I have now removed all servers from EM, but am still getting reports from jobs. The subject line for the last 24 hours reads: "Last 24 hours: 0 Errors, 0 Warnings, 0 Successes" which is what I would expect since no servers are reporting to EM. However, the body reads:

Code: Select all

Summary of last sessions for all jobs:
3 Errors, 3 Warnings, 14 Successes

I would expect this to also be "0 Errors, 0 Warnings, 0 Successes" because I have removed all the VBR servers. Maybe I'm not understanding what this report is telling me, but what I'd really like to do is reset all these numbers to 0 and then add only the VBR servers that I'm using.

[Vitaliy S.]

What if you try initiating a data collection job within the EM console after removing all backup servers? I guess it might reset the report summary to "0 Errors, 0 Warnings, 0 Successes" view.

[brupnick]

What if you try initiating a data collection job within the EM console after removing all backup servers?

This might be a very basic question, but how do I do this? If I go to Configuration --> Backup Servers and click the Start Collecting button, I get an error that says "Please add at least one Veeam Backup server first."

[Gostev]

Do you actually have backup servers added to EM?

[brupnick]

Do you actually have backup servers added to EM?

No, I removed them all in an attempt to reset all the counters.

[Gostev]

But then there is no servers to collect info from? Which is exactly what the error says.

[brupnick]

Correct, but the daily email that I receive is still listing stats for jobs. I'm curious how this is happening because I have removed all of the servers. And in Vitaliy's response above, he asked "What if you try initiating a data collection job within the EM console after removing all backup servers?" This led me to believe that this action was possible, but the message that I received made me question if I was, in fact, doing what he asked.

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, this is what I've asked you to try, unfortunately, it slipped out of my mind that this it not possible.

[brupnick]

Not a problem at all! I just wanted to make sure that we were talking about the same thing and that I was doing what you expected (even if it did error).

[rlawsha]

[merged]

Emails sent from our Enterprise Manager don't make sense. Here is a typical one. The subject of the email says there were 10 successes but the body of the email says there were 12 successes.

Email subject:Last 24 hours: 0 Errors, 0 Warnings, 10 Successes

Body of email:
Summary of last sessions for all jobs:
1 Errors, 0 Warnings, 12 Successes

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
https://VEEAM.mycompnay.com:9443/default.aspx

[dellock6]

They are two different time periods:
- subject is about last 24 hrs (so you know the last result of each backup)
- body is about the last overall result of each backup, regardless the last 24 hrs (so you know at least you have 1 successful result of each job)

I got some customers finding this confusing, but for me this separation is good!

[Gostev]

If you run jobs more often than daily, this is where the difference will be more obvious.

[Cokovic]

First i've found it a little bit irritating too. But now i'm fine with it.

The subject just states the overall statistics of the last 24 hours. And in the body text you've got the statistics of the last session.

So lets's say 2 of 100 jobs failed in the last 24 hours. Now Veeam retries usually these failed jobs and let's say the first retry is ok. Then this totally makes sense as you've got 2 failed jobs within the last 24 hours but no failed jobs regarding the latest session as the retry for the failed jobs worked fine.

[Gostev]

Please feel free to suggest how this can be improved not to irritate people

[Cokovic]

Please feel free to suggest how this can be improved not to irritate people

No suggestions on that as i'm really fine with it the way it is

I think it's just a matter of understanding it the right way.

Now i can see in the subject that there was a problem on some jobs so i can further investgate it. But no need to be concerned about anything as the last sessions in body text were all fine.

And if i want to i can change the parameters in the subject line with the statistics of last sessions.

So for me everything is fine and no irritations anymore

[rlawsha]

I would like to see something like:

Email subject:
Veeam Backup Report

Email Body:
Statistical summary for last session: 1 Errors, 0 Warnings, 12 Successes
Summary of all jobs for last 24 hours: 0 Errors, 0 Warnings, 10 Successes

What I don't get is:
I can see the importance of knowing the overall statistics for the last 24 hour period. But why include extra stats for just the last job? Either include all statistics for all jobs in the last 24 hours or don't inlcude any. Makes no sense to me to include stats for just one session and ignore the rest except to recap them.

Perhaps I am not understanding this right, help me clear it up....

[Cokovic]

An error in the stats of the last 24 hours just means that there were failed jobs. But Veeam usually performs a retry (by default 3 retries with a wait time of 10 minutes between). If now the retries of the failed jobs work as expected then the result of last sessions has to be with no errors. If last sessions still show up some errors it would mean that the retries also failed and that you should definitely take a look on it. If last sessions are without errors there is nothing to be concerned about as the retries were successfull.

Here is one example of my report:

Last 24 hours: 23 Errors, 6 Warnings, 127 Successes

Summary of last sessions for all jobs:
0 Errors, 6 Warnings, 132 Successes


Meaning for some reasons some of my jobs failed during the last 24 hours. But as the stats of last sessions shows up 0 errors i know that in the end everything went fine.

[brupnick]

138 jobs?! WOW!!

[Cokovic]

Yes it's a huge environment of 1500+ VMs

[Gostev]

Email subject:
Veeam Backup Report

That's a wasted subject! I don't even open most backup notifications I get, don't need to because all I really care is already included in the subject.

[brupnick]

Yes it's a huge environment of 1500+ VMs

That's awesome! If you don't mind me asking, how long does it take for you to run all those jobs? How do you have the jobs/VMs divided up?

[Cokovic]

Spread over 9 Veeam servers we start at 5:00 pm and last jobs end between 5:00 am and 8:00 am. Backups are configured per LUN. That way we backup automatically every newly created VM without editing our jobs.

[brupnick]

What are you using for storage?

[Cokovic]

6 physical servers with direct SAN access and local storage array with 10TB each. 3 servers as VMs located on the SAN itself. Once per week we backup the Veeam files to tape.

Backing up from Monday to Sunday in Reversed incremental mode with 15 retention points.

[brupnick]

That's amazing. And yet another endorsement for VBR - all those VMs/jobs in 12-15 hours. Thanks for sharing.

[Cokovic]

You are welcome