e-mail report improvements

[ctchang]

Thank you very much Dag for this detailed response! As I suspected, Veeam Backup server is pretty powerful. Only one last question - is it still possible for you top open backup properties (select Backups node, right-click the corresponding backup, select Properties), and look up some details on this run (increment size and dedupe/compress ratios). You can simply post screenshot here as well. I will really appreaciate this, since this is a very good real-world data attached to very thorough configuration description. Thanks a lot in advance!

Hi Anton,

Where can we find these two under job Properties? (I use SAN mode)

increment size and dedupe/compress ratios

Thanks.

[ctchang]

Just to confirm the config.

The DS3524 (with three loaded EXP3524) runs one Array (all 96 drives) in RAID10 carved up in 1TB Logical Drives with 64k blocks and 8MB VMFS Sectors
It's not the Turbo-edition and it only sports the standard Cache (2GB pr. controller)
Write-through caching and Dynamic Pre-fetch off (just ordinary Read-cache).
Cache-mirroring also turned off since we don't use write-back cacheing.

Each of the two controllers int the DS3524 run 4 * 8GBs FC (total of Eight) connections to two Brocade 8GB SAN Switches
ESXi Hosts run two Dual 8GBs FC HBA's each

All Paths are RoundRobin and balances nicely between all available paths to the DS3524
There is no VAAI support on this storage controller yet, but I'm hoping IBM/LSI will deliver in Q1/2011

The Veeam Server is nothing special.
A three year old, recycled HP DL380G5 with two Quad core Intel E5405 cpu's and 32GB RAM
Local disk (for backup) is an IBM EXP3000 with two ESM's (Dual, balanced path with 12 * 2TB SATA disks in RAID5 +HS) attached to an internal HP Smart Array P411 controller.
It attaches to the SAN with one Dual 8GBs FC (Emulex)

Now, going for the 2.5 Inch drives limits the available space (max 146GB at 15k, 300GB disks at 10k, 500GB at 7.2k), but it only uses 8U of rackspace, barely uses any power and hardly generates heat.
The many spindles compensates for the lack of 15k drives so far and IBM has promised they'll allow for at least twice (192) the drives in Q2/2011.
Hopefully there'll be larger 2.5 inch 10k/15k drives by then.

The speed is wonderfull though, considering this is sold as a vSMB, low-end system. It beats all of the Mid-Range systems I've tried (IBM DS5300/DS5020, EMC CLARiiON CX4, HP EVA4400/EVA6400/EVA8400, Dell EQL PS4000/PS6000) so far.

Thanks for posting the detail config.
Btw, I noticed your CPU is "two Quad core Intel E5405 cpu's", FYI, my one and only Veeam server has a single E5620, 2.4Ghz Quad-Core, but I can only get about av 1GB/s max seen on one of the VMs during incremental and CPU already topped 90% during the backup over 1Gbps link, I am using PS6000XV 600GB disks. Lucky you, you can really fully ultilize an old server and reach something like 8GB/s speed on one of your VMs.

But again, anything speed over 1GB/s, I can pretty much say the VM didn't change much and that's why it's not a "real number"

Anton, it would be nice if Veeam can add a row showing Three important stats:

1. The average CPU usage for the job and individual VM backup
2. The average bandwidth used for either SAN or LAN or WAN
3. The target storage processing speed in terms of MB/s. (this is different than simply using total processed VMDK block/time, I think it should somehow represent the real speed on target storage), if you can do it, then please also include IPOS number.

Thanks.

[Gostev]

Where can we find these two under job Properties? (I use SAN mode)

Same place as I explained in my post that you have quoted

1. The average CPU usage for the job and individual VM backup
2. The average bandwidth used for either SAN or LAN or WAN
3. The target storage processing speed in terms of MB/s. (this is different than simply using total processed VMDK block/time, I think it should somehow represent the real speed on target storage), if you can do it, then please also include IPOS number.

1. It will be constant from job to job and from day to day, frankly I do not see any point of reporting this in each report.
2. I guess you are talking about throughtput of connection to source storage here. Agree.
3. I guess you mean average write speed. Agree.

[ctchang]

Same place as I explained in my post that you have quoted
1. It will be constant from job to job and from day to day, frankly I do not see any point of reporting this in each report.
2. I guess you are talking about throughtput of connection to source storage here. Agree.
3. I guess you mean average write speed. Agree.

Is it the 2nd tag "Storage"
Compression Ratio and Storage ? Storage one is actually for deduplication? (ie, Optimized for Local Targe, etc)

[ctchang]

Same place as I explained in my post that you have quoted
1. It will be constant from job to job and from day to day, frankly I do not see any point of reporting this in each report.
2. I guess you are talking about throughtput of connection to source storage here. Agree.
3. I guess you mean average write speed. Agree.

One more to add I think it will benefit
4. The compression % and dedupe % for each job and individual VM would be really useful and showing how much space saved will be a huge selling proint for Veeam.

[Gostev]

We already show this in backup properties (on job level, since dedupe does not make sense for individual VMs). Is dedupe and compression ratios something you really want to see and monitor during each incremental run, like for example duration and amount of changed data for each VM? Because dedupe and compression ratios will be largely the same between increments. I am simply concerned about overloading already busy report with additional numbers which are not essential but "selling point" kind of thing that you only need to see and get impressed of once (before you buy)

[jfowler]

[merged]

I love the reports that are emailed to me after a job, but I would like some more information in them. such as...

I would like to see the actual amount of new and changed data since the last backup for each vm. Currently it shows the total size and the processed size, which is exactly the same every time... In fact, is there ever a situation where processed size is not the same as total size? Seems redundant.

I would also like to see how much disk space is used to store those changes, so some compression and deduplication statistics.

Maybe a backup file listing and what the total percentage of each file is from each vm. So if I have a 1TB .vbk file, what percentage of that is dedplication data (shared), what percentage is unique to a particlar VM.

I would like to see a growth indicator to see how much data is changing over time from backup to backup for each VM.

Also, if I have a vm that takes an hour to backup one da, but 13 hours the next, I would like to see a reason why it took so long.

Thanks, great work.

[derekf]

[merged]

Hi there,
This may be a feature request, or there may be some options I've not found to enable this, however I'd like some more information on the backup job email reports.

Specifically it currently lists total size, processed size, and processing rate, but these are not entirely valid (especially with thin provisioned disks).

What I'd really like to see are fields such as:

- Raw data processed (the actual data in the disks as opposed to the allocation of the disk)
- Changed data processed (the actual data that was identified as changed and needing backing up)
- Compressed data transferred (the actual volume of compressed data transferred)
- Compression ratio (the compression ratio)

If there's any way of getting some form of deduplication information / stats in there as well that would be great.

THanks,

Derek...

[Vitaliy S.]

Derek, currently this info is not available in the reports, but you can find it in the UI. Thanks for the feedback and feature request.

[derekf]

Thanks Vitali,

Where would I find this in the GUI? I've tried running HTML report on a job and also looking at realtime statistics for the completed job, but can't see the information there.

[Vitaliy S.]

Take a look at our User Guide (page 106) for the location.

[cparker4486]

Take a look at our User Guide (page 106) for the location.

This link is not working.

[Gostev]

That's because Vitaly keeps posting direct but temporary links to stuff in cloud
You can find the User Guide on the product page on our website, under Resources.