Feature Request: Veeam Plugin for vSphere client

[BearHuntr]

I like the information presented with the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager, but I would find it much more useful as a plugin to the vSphere client. It would be awesome if you could just right-click on a VM and have access to add to an existing job, view backups, or start backups or even restore from a backup.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback! We are always ready to consider any feature which has sufficient number of requests, but I like your idea.

[fredbloggs]

We are always ready to consider any feature which has sufficient number of requests.

Then add me to the list of requests, I think that'd be very cool. Would also be good if when creating a snapshot on vSphere you could select to use the Veeam VSS as oppopsed to VMware Quiescence.

[jgremillion]

I like that idea also. Count me in on this request.

[PeterPan]

Good Idea. Count me in ....

[glennsantacruz]

Ditto. Also - I suggest a survey/vote system embedded within these forums, specifically for feature requests. You could see, at a glance, how many people are voting for a feature (be sure to restrict voting to one per community member...)

[Gostev]

I don't see any point of doing this, because anyone who sees the topic would obviously vote "yes" for ANY nice-to-have feature at all.

Real life analogy, imagine poll like that:
- Would you like to get complimentary Starbucks coffee and chocolate bar each time you leave your house in the morning?

Guess how many people would vote YES to that?
Everyone!

Because why not? Thinking goes:
"Well, even if I don't really need it (I can live without this today), I can always just throught it away (= not use the feature). But what if I ever need this capability... for instance, if I miss breakfast... yeah, I better vote yes, just in case..."

Similarly, for my 5+ years experience as a product manager, I am yet to hear "no" when asking any customer "would like feature X added to the product"? It is always "yes", whether they need it or not.

We do appreciate the ideas, but we don't believe in judging importance and priority by the number of votes. Instead, we always compare the value - how much value adding this feature will bring to this product, comparing to that feature? And having dozens of features pending which increase product value in times, there is little reason to defocus our development efforts on bells&whistles.

I like to say "customers prefer our products because we lack many features". And it is true, only the dependency is not direct. By not distracting our development on smaller nice-to-have features, we are able to focus on delivering very new and innovative technologies bringing so much value to our product (take SureBackup for instance ), that our customers prefer us over competition despite lack of minor nice-to-have's.

[Gostev]

Just to prove my final words on innovation and high value features, here is the list of features Veeam was first to bring to VMware disaster recovery market in past 2 years. And most of our competition still does not have a portion of these and their product...

Again, just to stress: all of these features below were unique and 1st to market at the time of the corresponding version's release.

[fredbloggs]

I don't see any point of doing this, because anyone who sees the topic would obviously vote "yes" for ANY nice-to-have feature at all.

Real life analogy, imagine poll like that:
- Would you like to get complimentary Starbucks coffee and chocolate bar each time you leave your house in the morning?

Guess how many people would vote YES to that?
Everyone!

Just want to take my vote off that request, don't like starbucks

I think you guys do pretty well with implementing the decent features that you have

[glennsantacruz]

OK, after much self-analysis I realize I typically assume most folks would vote according to their own genuine needs/wants, instead of just saying "yes" to anything appealing. I realize the "real-world" doesn't usually operate in an ideal democratic fashion, so perhaps a voting system on this community forum would not necessarily work very well...

Having said that, I would certainly vote for a vCenter plugin. Frankly, I'm surprised this is even considered a "wow" feature -- I would have anticipated that the good Veeam folks would have planned this from the day that VMware announced an API for vCenter plugins. The fact that a community posting could influence a decision to create such a plugin makes me wonder - how many other features are your end-users thinking, "that's obvious - I won't even suggest it, since surely Veeam is already considering it..."

Wow! -- A vCenter plugin? Is it really a new idea? Frankly, I'm saddened to see a reaction of, "wow, you're right - we should do that!" instead of "you're right- we've been pursuing it for 12 months now..." Really, this is pretty low-hanging fruit, in my opinion. Then again, maybe everyone is focused on other "obvious" projects and haven't given much consideration to the "single pane of glass" approach to enterprise management...

[Gostev]

haven't given much consideration to the "single pane of glass" approach to enterprise management...

Your suggestion on integrating with vSphere Infrastructure Client makes perfect sense, but you are assuming that vSphere Infrastructure Client is going to become that "single pane of glass enterprise management tool". And this assumption is what I disagree with.

[glennsantacruz]

I disagree with your assumption that I am referring to the VIC as being a single pane of glass enterprise management tool. I'm describing the approach to management instead -- and the Veeam Enterprise Management web tool is a good start; but it's really more of a "monitor" (start/stop/report) tool at this stage. My point is that introduction of more and more tools, more and more applications, etc. is different than asking "can we integrate well into an existing management tool".

I know software development is not trivial and tons of requests/comments/criticism can sometimes be noisy. Didn't mean the comment to come across as rude; I'm just hoping to help push the product further into the enterprise space.

[alecprior]

you are assuming that vSphere Infrastructure Client is going to become that "single pane of glass enterprise management tool". And this assumption is what I disagree with.

There's no "going to become" about it. We use vSphere so by default VI client is *already* our single pane of glass tool. Any vsphere related daily use tool that uses a different interface (leave lone having to actually go to a server's desktop to use a single instance app (we still use B&R 3)) is a pain.

From the strength of your comments on here though, it's clearly a "won't" rather than a "can't" decision. Given the triviality of making it work with such a clearly talented developer team, I find that a shame.

[Gostev]

Hi Alec, thank you for your feedback. I appreciate that vSphere client is your single pane of glass tool today. But, we found that this is not the case for larger customers - because many are already using (and most are planning to use) multiple hypervisors. So we'd rather spend effort on enhancing Enterprise Management web tool, which can easily be made heterogeneous. As Glenn correctly mentioned our web UI is really "1.0" in terms of functionality, and enhancing it further is one of the most common requests from the enterprise level customers currently. So this is clearly a priority.

By the way, have you considered integrating Veeam Enterprise Manager UI into the vSphere client as a web page?

I agree that vSphere client integration would be nice to have, and I did not say "won't". I've said that it always comes down to available resources and priorities. I am always trying to set correct expectations around how soon the specific feature will be delivered (when I can), instead of responding something vague like "we are planning this for future releases".

I also have to note that there are additional issues with the vSphere client integration way proposed in the original post, because it does not fit well with future vSphere Client directions, and how VMware recommends to integrate with vSphere Client today given those future directions. But this information is covered by NDA so I cannot publicly discuss it.

[BearHuntr]

By the way, have you considered integrating Veeam Enterprise Manager UI into the vSphere client as a web page?

Do you have instructions on how to do that? Thanks!

[Gostev]

Do you have instructions on how to do that? Thanks!

There is even a tool for this, created by one of our SEs
http://blog.virtualizeplanet.com/index. ... &Itemid=40

Or you can use manual procedure described here:
http://www.jasemccarty.com/blog/?p=240