VA Managed / Standalone vs. VA Policy backup statistics notification via E-Mail

[MATM]

Dear all,
 
regarding Veeam Agent vs. Veeam Agent Policy, managed by Veeam B&R. In case of notification options, there seem to be differences?

TL;DR: (Veeam Agent) Backup Jobs sending full backup job run report / statistics including Success, Warning, Failure (via mail), Veeam Agent Policy only sending Policy apply notification (Backup job configuration has been updated.) - VA Policy should notify identical as like as VA Jobs centrally managed or standalone

- In case of Veeam Agent (managed or not) we can configure E-Mail notifications, sending E-Mails to a Mailbox with backup statistics, Success, Warning or Failure.
- In case of Veeam Agent Policy based Agents, we can configure E-Mail notification at the Proctection Group as well as the Policy itself (daily e-mail report), which only notify about successfully applied policies (Backup job configuration has been updated.) BUT we don’t get any notification about Success, Warning or Failure of backup job runs. (Should we?)
- Regarding Backup statistics, Success, Warning or Failure of the backup job runs, we have to enter the VBR Management Console, click on (each) Veeam Agent Policy, right-click statistics. In our case, doing this 36 times a day (for daily checks) is driving us nuts.
 
I did several tests with VAPs, Protection Groups, etc, checked the documentation as well. After searching inside the forum, it figured out that’s by design, isn’t it? If so, I’d like to make it as a [Feature Request] to receive E-Mail notification (with Statistics, Success, Warning, Failure) with Veeam Agent Policy (of course Server + Workstation Mode) identical as like as Veeam Agent Jobs. Several posts similar to this pointed to Veeam One but let me tell you, this is and will never be a solution (rather maybe a marketing sales try ). So, statistics of Veeam Agent Policy backup runs are already centrally collected to VBR, sending them via E-Mail shouldn't be that big deal, right?
 
Let me explain why this would be great: We’re running 36 Servers at 36 branch offices, everyone more or less individual, so we have to use 36 Veeam Agent Policies. Internet connection is more or less stable, the servers are running backups only to a local backup repository at their locations. Due to this, a Veeam Agent Backup Job managed by the VBR (centrally) is no solution. Rather this, the Veeam Agent Policies for this scenario are perfect and save me tons of hours for managing (and updating) Veeam Agents via Policy instead of Standalone with this branch office Servers.
For backup job runs (Statistics with Success, Warning, Failure), we use to receive e-mail notifications to a central Mailbox (Exchange Public Folder) which every administrator (also non-backup-administrators without access to VBR) got access to it, for the daily check. But we can’t get these mails for Veeam Agent Policies and would be highly appreciated.
Furthermore, on some of these branch offices we’re running applications, for which the application owners want to receive mail notification about backup runs as well. Inside Veeam Agent Jobs (centrally managed or standalone) we can add additional mail addresses of the individual application owners, working perfectly fine. Well, that’s possible inside Veeam Agent Policy as well but only notifying about applied policies (Backup job configuration has been updated) … there the circle closes.
 
Or, it’s just a misconfiguration or bug … so, appreciate our reply. Thanks in advance everyone!

[Dima P.]

Hello MATM,

Thank you for sharing your feedback! Veeam Agent policy (aka managed by agent job type) creates a daily report for all activities including job configuration and backup activity, can you please take a look at the report details - the chart below the generical information should display the latest activity for every machine in the policy.

I suspect that the reason why backup activity is not displayed is that your agents had no connection with Veeam B&R server for the past day, so the job session information was not uploaded to the Veeam B&R. Possibly you are using local folder of smb share destinations in the policy?

[MATM]

Hello Dima,

thank you for your fast reply. I can confirm all agents having successfull connection with Veeam B&R server, I had a close lookup at our central firewall, even while testing realtime.
You're absolutely right; all Veeam Agent Policy servers are using local folder or smb share as backup destination (due to the branch office scenario with more or less poor internet connection to our central DC).

Inside Veeam B&R server / console -> right-click at the Veeam Agent Policy -> I can see Success, Warning or Failure for the backup job run of the past day. With right-click at Statistics -> I can see the latest backup information in detail. It's even in Veeam B&R history. But, not via E-Mail Notification, which only is showing "Backup job configuration has been updated" on the "Details" column. It's always showing "Success" because the Policy (Backup job configuration) has been successfully updated, even while the backup job run was warning or failure. The columns (Headers) like Start time, End time, Size, Read, Transferred, Duration are shown, but empty for each Policy/Server. As well as no information about Success, Warning or Failure about the backup job run itself via E-Mail, instead of that successfully showing in Veeam B&R.

The Veeam B&R Server seems to gather these information with the Protection Group daily discovery (?). When the Protection Group daily discovery job not running, I don't even get these infos in Veeam B&R console.

[Dima P.]

Hello MATM,

Thank you for your feedback!

The Veeam B&R Server seems to gather these information with the Protection Group daily discovery (?). When the Protection Group daily discovery job not running, I don't even get these infos in Veeam B&R console.

That sounds right, can you possibly run one-time protection group discovery to check if the information about the client's backup will be renewed in the email reporting?

[MATM]

Hi Dima,

protection group scan runs daily and always successfully at 23:55 / 11.55 pm, after all VA jobs and policy jobs have been ended. Manual one-time run unfortunately doesn't make any difference.

These days I was able to create a test-scenario to prove your hint regarding VA policy backups with backup destination to local disk or share. I took an existing Windows Server 2016 (which we took end of life), running in our Datacenter onsite, same location as our Veeam Backup Servers, not the same subnet, but only routed through our DC-Backbone + DC-Firewall, no VPN, no Onsite-Offsite-Firewall blabla … and enabled E-Mail notification inside Veeam Agent Policy.

Test 1 – Same configuration as our servers at our branch offices:
Veeam Agent Policy + Backup Destination to local disk on same Test-Server to Drive D:\Backup\
Result: Same situation as at our branch offices, no job results in E-Mail Notification, fields are empty, only reporting success and “Backup job configuration has been updated.” under “Details”.

Test 2:
Veeam Agent Policy + Backup Destination to VBR Backup Repository with location on same Test-Server to Drive D:\Backup\ (= Same location as Test 1 but via VBR Backup Repository instead of local destination)
Result: Successfully reported last backup job results via E-Mail as I wanted / wish for it! (and btw. nothing under “Details” = identical as VBR console -> right-click onto the Policy -> Report)

So I was able to prove your hint compared with same configuration/server; with VA Policy there are no job results via E-Mail Notification when destination is local (drive). Unfortunately I wasn’t able to test with network share as you mentioned as well. And again, job results are successfully synched to VBR console which I can access via right-click onto the Policy + Report for Test 1 + 2

Firewall no denys, everything allowed. Just waiting for our network team to prove for any other blocks, but I don't guess so. Seems like this is by design?

[MATM]

Additionally to my previous post:

Did a Test 3:
Veeam Agenty Policy on a server at one of our branch offices, backup destination now VBR Backup Repository to our central DC, now reporting backup job results, too!

Network-Team confirming no block / deny or other restrictions at firewall