Monitoring VM Snapshots

[dan.nichols]

It would be useful to have the capability to monitor the age of VM snapshots (i.e. all snapshots more than 48hrs old generate a warning).

It would also be good to have the option to take an automatic recovery action (e.g. remove snapshots older than 48hrs).

Is this something that is planned for future MP versions?

[Alec King]

Hi Dan,

MP is focused on real-time performance and event monitoring....Snapshot monitoring is something that fits in more with our Reporter Enterprise product.
Using Reporter you can see nice stacked graphs of VM storage use including their snapshots, snapshot size etc.

The MP does have a Task to 'Remove All Snapshots' from a selected VM however.
And of course there are API events for [Create/Delete]VirtualMachineSnapshot that our Collector will forward. (ID 387 in nworksEventLog)
So if you REALLY want to totally forbid snapshots - you could run a Monitor on those events, trigger an automated response in SCOM to run the Remove Snapshots Task, and so immediately delete a snapshot as soon as it's created!
(that's pretty drastic though You could also use the Monitor alerts to simply generate a report, and go hassle the VM owner.... )

The Monitor for Snapshot events is not included out-of-box in the Mp today, but I can take a feature request to include it in next update. Meanwhile you can easily create it yourself, using SCOM Authoring section...let me know if you want details on that.

Cheers!
Alec

[dan.nichols]

Hi Alec,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Snapshots are a powerful and extremely useful feature of VM's so I would not want to completely disable them . However, in my experience snapshots that are left in place for an extended period can cause performance and availability problems.

I am looking for a pro-active operational level warning/alert to be generated once snapshots reach a certain age (size would also be nice). I believe that OpsMgr is an ideal framework to generate such an alert rather than having to go and look at a report periodically. I am evaluating the nWorks MP for some of my clients as well as for internal use and snapshot age alerting is something that I was hoping to find. Feature request

Thanks.

Dan.

[Alec King]

Hi Dan

Well - I just had a snoop in the Managed Object Browser in the VI-API, and VM snapshot info is there, including Date Created....

So - we could add the capability to track snapshot age in our Collector. And have it throw an event if snapshot is older than 'X' hours....triggering an alert in SCOM.

I will add this as a feature request for a future update - watch this space!

Cheers
Alec

[dan.nichols]

Hi Alec,

Sounds good. I look forward to seeing this in the MP!

Great to see a vendor taking input from the end users.

Thank you.

Dan.

[Alec King]

You're welcome Dan!

And please keep the feedback coming - it's how we make the Products better.

As we say at Veeam - "Listening to you - Building the Tools you need". And we try to LIVE it - not just say it!

Cheers!
Alec

[glemmestad]

Did this make it into the current release, or scheduled for next release?
We are looking for "old snapshot monitoring" as well. Curently doing it with powershell scripts -> sql -> web site monitoring. Actioning old snapshots at least every couple of days, so this would be essential to have in SCOM.

[Irene L.]

Hi Glemmestad,

We do have this feature request in our feature list and we are working on it, but unfortunately it will not be implemented in the next release. Please stay tuned to our website for the latest news .

[Alec King]

Hi Glemmestad,

I AM intending to have this functionality in next MP update - however there are ways you can do it with nworksMP today.

There is a VI-API event for snapshot creation, and removal. And all VI events are logged into the nworksEventLog on our Collector server.

The event for snapshots is a TaskEvent, ID 387 - here's an example :

Event Type: Information
Event Source: nworksSource
Event Category: None
Event ID: 387
Date: 11/26/2009
Time: 7:34:08 AM
User: N/A
Computer: VEM3
Description:
[TaskEvent] Task: Create virtual machine snapshot
--------------------------------------------------------------

We attach parameters to this event - parameter 7 is the VM name.

So you can create a Rule to alert on this today, targeted at our MP object "VMGUEST Virtual Machine". Just match our VM object id with parameter 7 of this event, also match event description text above, and you will get an alert against a VM when a snapshot is created.

It should also be possible to run a Monitor against these events, and have a timer-based alert that will watch for not just snapshot - but AGE of snapshot, and alert accordingly.

And we could even have option to call our nworks MP Task of "Remove Snapshot" as a Recovery Action after a given time (e.g. 24 hours) to provide full automation. This is what I plan to include out-of-box in our next release

I'll write up full details of how to implement a Snapshot Rule/Monitor in current nworks MP, and post here ASAP!

Cheers,
Alec

[mreilly]

Any update on this? Has snapshot monitoring been incorporated into v5.5? Thanks...

[Alec King]

Hi Matt, Dan, and others!

Happy to confirm that a Snapshot Age monitor is part of our 5.6 MP release - which will ship any day now

We publish the age (in hours) of the oldest snapshot for each VM as a metric. This drives a monitor, where of course you can use overrides to choose your own threshold time when you will be alerted for this 'forgotten snapshot'. Our default alert is 48 hours (as suggested by Dan in this thread!).

We'll be doing a mailshot when we release 5.6, also just watch the MP page on veeam.com.

And please all keep the feedback and ideas coming!

Cheers,
Alec King

[Christopher Keyaert]

That's really a good news

I've got a little question, is it possible to be alerted when the creation of a snapshot takes more than x hours ?

Thank you
Bests Regards
Christopher

[Gostev]

Creation of snapshot is pretty much instant... did you mean deletion by any chance?

[Christopher Keyaert]

Creation of snapshot is pretty much instant... did you mean deletion by any chance?

Hello,

no no, I mean well the creation. In fact we are using smvi for the backup of our vi on NetApp Storage. Sometime, we've got a hung on a snapshot creation and that block all the process.
So, we would like to be alerted when a snapshot is taking more than X minutes. The same struff for the deletion could be nice also.

Thank you
bests Regards