[Feature Request] More detail in console about active jobs

[sknetsch]

One thing I really miss from other backup products I have managed, more detail displayed about what an active job is doing. For example, a running Backup for 365 is taking a really long time. The whole job summary says how many objects it has processed, number of items processed and the data transferred.

But it does not show the same details in the actions. It only shows the name of the item and how long it is taking. It would be really handy to know how many items and how much data has been transferred at the object level. Would help me understand what is going on and would allow me to investigate what changed to prompt a difference in backup times. This applies to the main B&R console as well and the jobs running in there.

[Mike Resseler]

Hey Stuart,

We have plans to show other and more information in the future, and it is a good topic to talk about. One thing is sure, we cannot show everything. For example, when the backup starts, we have no idea how many items we will need to download, nor do we have any idea of the size of items and so on. Because we need to get through all services "step-by-step" (there is parallelization but...) we only know most of the information the moment we did a query and then start the download. Doing all the queries first before starting downloads is not an option because the query results will become invalid after some time (which means doing it again) and it slows down the backup entirely.

That said. I read that you want to see how many items and how much data has been transferred at the object level. Can you clarify what you mean by object? Is it the item (e.g. an email) or data per user (a mailbox/ Onedrive) or site, or are we talking about objects on the Object Storage?

Let me know, we would love to understand what information you need, is useful for you (and everyone else )

[sknetsch]

Often I want to verify what the job is doing so far against what I know about the Item I am working on.

For example, an E365 mailbox, from Microsoft I can generate a report on how big the mailbox is and how many items are in it. When a backup is running against that mailbox, I should see how many items it has backed up, how much new data has been copied as the job is running.

In B&R same logic against backups or even copy jobs. When it is processing a VM, how much new data has been copied? How much is duplicate and therefore skipped? There should be some sort of running tally in any job that at the granular level can tell an admin what has been done so far. I can guestimate with reasonable accuracy how much should be done by looking at the source myself outside of the Veeam console. The details presented will be different based on the type of job. (E.g. I wouldn't expect "number of files" in a VM object backup or copy.)

[Mike Resseler]

Understood, but we will not be able to give certain numbers. In your example, with the mailbox. Only the first backup that # of items will be (close) to equal what we protect. In fact, we will have more items protected than you can see because we protect lots of hidden items also, which are not visible through that report. From then on, it is only changes so it will never match the report anymore.

New data: Yes, that is certainly something we can work on in the future. Maybe something like: Mailbox: xyz@abc.com - protected items: 136

The logic will never be the same as with B&R I'm afraid, as this is application-specific backup versus snapshot type of backup. But as said, we need more numbers and I am open for more suggestions