Veeam Wishlist / Reports

[Vitaliy S.]

First of all, I would like to thank everyone here who has already made a great contribution to our Veeam community forums.

Secondly, I think it is a right time to create a separate topic to accommodate all the feedback reagarding Reporter functionality and the reports we have now. I believe you do have your favourite reports, moreover I guess there are reports that are currently missing and you would like to see them in the next version of Veeam Reporter. So I would appreciate if some of you could share their experience and thoughts about current and future reports.

Hope we will be able to learn more about your needs, and we'll all find this topic useful!

[jpriddy]

A report that could summarize active VM Snapshots would be great.

[Vitaliy S.]

Actually, you can create such a report even now. All you need to do is to open a Base Report Pack -> Infrastructure Report -> Object type (Virtual Machine) and then specify any snapshot parameter you need.

Please let us know if this is the report you are talking about. Would you like to share any feedback regarding the report we have now?

[MB-NS]

hello,

i already expressed my interest in a "storage trending" report here : Custom report to see evolution of datastore
(btw, is the new report pack coming along well ?)

More general features requests :
- customized dashboard (by user or groups for instance)
- being able to use *any* vCenter/host/VM counter that exists and use it in reports. I understand the DB could get very big so it could be a feature where the administrators selects which data is collected by Veeam (the defaults being all that is collected as of now).

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Mathieu,

Yes I do remember that you've expressed an interest in "storage trending". As for Over-provisioned storage report then it will be available next week. This report will list datastores which are in “risk group” and also will give an insight on business units affected, out-of-storage date and recommendations on how to handle the problem. Should be pretty useful

customized dashboard (by user or groups for instance)

This functionality will be available in our next major release.

being able to use *any* vCenter/host/VM counter that exists and use it in reports. I understand the DB could get very big so it could be a feature where the administrators selects which data is collected by Veeam (the defaults being all that is collected as of now).

That's correct the DB might be really big. Do you have any counters or object properties that you would like to see and which you cannot find in the current release?

[Gostev]

i already expressed my interest in a "storage trending" report here : Custom report to see evolution of datastore
(btw, is the new report pack coming along well ?)

We are planning to make the new report pack should become generally available next week, along with Reporter 4.0.2 maintenance release. Thanks.

[MB-NS]

Great news for the new report pack !

That's correct the DB might be really big. Do you have any counters or object properties that you would like to see and which you cannot find in the current release?

Tough question, I have no specific counters in mind (maybe VM count ? but I'm not sure, it may be already collected), but the idea is that we wouldn't have to wait for new report pack to meet specific needs (such as the storage trending need).
vCenter presents a lot of counters and VMware is adding new counters regularly. My point is that such a feature would allow customers virtually unlimited flexibilty in what we can report on.
On the presentation side, I think generics graphs and pies would be enough for presenting these counters.

Veeam could then focus on the "integrated" value of reports pack, which can present several related counters, and data in general, in a more meaningful context.

[bdwyer]

We came very close to purchasing one of your chief competitors products but ended up with the VeeamOne Suite because we liked the Monitor component more. We're doing our best to make do with Reporter, but there are what I consider to be some basic and what I believe should be simple reports that out of the box are missing:

1.) A report that lists orphaned VM's (ie vm's that were removed from inventory but still exist on the data stores).
2.) A report listing the templates stored in the clusters also showing if the virtual disks are thin provisioned or not. You can get a view of this in vCenter, but we've not been able to find a way to re-produce this in Reporter.
3.) We'd also really like to see the ability to report on the relationship of objects from the VM all the way up to the vCenter:
VM-->Resource Pool-->Cluster-->vCenter. This should be a given, but right now, we can't do this. If we're reporting on configuration of a VM, we want to be able to see it's entire path from the top down.


I know there are more, but many we've put together ourselves. I have to admit, we generally are not thrilled with the design and ease of use of the reporter interface. It has potential, but I think there's room for growth. Just being honest.

Brian

[Gostev]

I have to admit, we generally are not thrilled with the design and ease of use of the reporter interface.

Next version is totally awesome at this particularly. I know you will love it!

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Brian,

Thank you for your positive feedback on Veeam Monitor! Now let's take a look at your report requests:

1. We've got "Inactive VMs" report, which is included to Get To Know Reporter report pack. Have you seen it by the way?

This report scans datastores for VM files that haven't been accessed for a defined period of time. Although this report shows inactive VMs, it doesn't show you junk files (files which were left after VM removals). I think it shouldn't be too hard to add this report.

2. Yes, that's possible!

Just choose Base Report Pack -> Infrastructure report -> Object "Virtual Machine" -> Columns "Name, Template, Virtual Disk: is thin provisioned". I would also recommend you to use a "Template" grouping, that would make this report look nicer.

3. The same steps should be followed here, the only difference is a set of properties being used: Name, Datacenter, Cluster, Host, Resource Pool/vApp.

I know there are more, but many we've put together ourselves. I have to admit, we generally are not thrilled with the design and ease of use of the reporter interface. It has potential, but I think there's room for growth. Just being honest.

I really appreciate your honesty and want to assure you that you made a right choice. Anton is 100% correct, we are going to introduce more hot features to Veeam Reporter and Veeam ONE as a whole. New UI, more reports and other stuff is coming, so stay tuned...

P.S. if you have any other report requests feel free to just send me PM to discuss it further.

Thanks!

[felyjos]

Actually, you can create such a report even now. All you need to do is to open a Base Report Pack -> Infrastructure Report -> Object type (Virtual Machine) and then specify any snapshot parameter you need.

Please let us know if this is the report you are talking about. Would you like to share any feedback regarding the report we have now?

I tried this report but it shows all fields Snapshot: Create Time, Snapshot description, Snapshot: File modified, Snapshot: size, Snapshot name, empty ONLY
Snapshot is disabled is always set to false.
Any missing parameter for the collection of data?

Thanks,
Dom

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Dom,

Could you tell me if you have any data at all? Any performance? Sounds like datastore collection jobs failed for some reason that is why snapshot information is missing for you.

I would suggest digging through collection job log files (you can ask our support team for assistance). By the way what account is being used to connect to vCenter Server? Does it have enough permissions on all datastores?

Thanks.

[felyjos]

Hello Vitaly,

Yes I have three servers with data only.
Yes the datastore colelction job is failing.
As I am taking over I hope all accounts have enough permissions but I will need to cross check.

This is the log I could find:
Job name: CollectionJobTestJAU
Start time: 7/19/2011 3:53 PM
Stop time: 7/19/2011 4:17 PM
Result: Failed

Several questions:
- where is the account : svcVCenterMgr?
- where I could change the log location "'C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Veeam\Veeam Reporter\SchedulingService.log' for details." this is a user folder and the account is disabled as the user left two weeks ago!!!?

Thanks,
DOm

[Vitaliy S.]

Well that explains, please contact our support team for assistance with datastore tasks.

[dominic.paquin]

Is there any report that could report the number of IOPs generated by each VM Guest and by each Datastore?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Dominic,

Yes, that's possible, but with Veeam Monitor. The good news is that we are merging Monitor and Reporter into a single product which is called Veeam ONE that will have a single reporting engine.

Thank you.

[jantman]

Hello Dominic,

Yes, that's possible, but with Veeam Monitor. The good news is that we are merging Monitor and Reporter into a single product which is called Veeam ONE that will have a single reporting engine.

Thank you.

Any news on when this will be done? I could really use this on my Dashboard.

Also, on the wishlist, though not exactly a report... it would be a great if there were a way to create dashboard widgets of a certain size... specifically I'm going crazy trying to get widgets to be half of the width of the dashboard.

[Vitaliy S.]

Jason, Veeam ONE v6 (Monitor+Reporter) is coming in the first half of this year.

As to the widget problem, then we have also addressed by introducing multiple predefined dashboards full of widgets.

[bkamay]

We have mutiple companies that share a common VM environemnt and I'd love to be able to create a pie graph for our CIO showing the percentage of CPU utilization by company for the past month.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Bryon, do you have Business View installed? Do you know that you can split your VM environment by the company name and then build reports based on these groups?

[bkamay]

Hi Vitaliy, I do have Business View installed. I do have all of my guests assigned by business in BizView. Is that what you mean by split the VM environment by company name? Every report I create in BizView shows the %CPU consumed for each individual guest. I can't seem to get a tatal percentage consumed for all the guests asociated with a particular business.

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, I was referring to Business View. Oh I see...would you like to use these reports in showback purposes?

[bkamay]

I would like to see the total percentage of processor consumed by each divisions combined virtual machines. Today it only shows me each individual VM's percentage of CPU which I have to maually SUM in excel. For example if I could get 1 pie graph that showed business 1 consumed 25% of the total CPU, Business 2 consumed 50% and business 3 consumed 25% I'd be very happy.

[Vitaliy S.]

Got it, thanks for the feedback!

[ozgurk]

Hi,

v6 monitor is really great. I have a requirement (also im sure, other guys thought like me ). You can see active vm memory in vm's own memory related sections, but in reporting pages, you cannot. In an over/undersized or vm performance report page adding a min/max/average active memory would be great and help us to consider memory allocation. I know, over/undersize reports recommends us to achieve that goal, but some managers would like to see real memory usage percentages in reports.

thanks

[ivordillen]

A report in the B&R template that would give an overview of the duration of a/the job(s).

kind regards,

Ivor

[nharvey]

I have a reboot that Paul@Veeam helped me make- it shows me the VM, the Datastore, and the Free / Provisioned space. (awesome)
It emails me twice a week with the report (awesome)
I then remove ALL the horrible formatting from the report and make a new column that shows the used space with a formula (=B1-A1) . (not awesome)
I copy these values to a "master excel sheet" that shows me how the used space has changed over time (not awesome)
Would be awesome see a dashboard of the space over time..

[changeupcharley]

Being able to set the logging directory would be great. I am aware of the settings to limit logging retention, etc are helpful, but it would be awesome to be able to actually choose where logs are recorded, so C:\ doesn't potentially fill up.

[Vitaliy S.]

Usually logs do not consume much space... Did you have a situation when Veeam ONE log files filled up your drive C? Thanks for the feedback!

[changeupcharley]

Usually logs do not consume much space... Did you have a situation when Veeam ONE log files filled up your drive C? Thanks for the feedback!

Unfortunately, the server I acquired has a pretty small C:\ volume. I get about 8-10GB a month for Veeam logs. I agree, that's not a lot of logging data, comparatively. I utilize the features available, but I thought I would throw it out there to help the democracy, if there is one


EDIT: I thought thsi was for Backup and Replication. Sorry for posting in the wrong thread.