Disable VeeamONE alarms for B&R created restore/mount VMs

[ChrisGundry]

Hi,

Wondering if anyone has a good way to exclude VMs generated by Veeam B&R for mount/restore purposes from VeeamONE alarms?

Ie, if you do a guest file restore from storage snapshot for a VM called SERVER01 you will get a temp restore/mount VM created called SERVER01_RANDOMID. This VM will then flag in VeeamONE as having no backups, power state etc.

I know I can create a buisness view and exclude those alarms on the buisness view, but I have a few issues with this:
1. Having to create a 'business view' for every exclusion I want to do is a pain in the proverbial. I don't use 'business views' for anything other than exclusions and I have a load of them setup now!

2. Getting the VMs into the view... The only thing these VMs have to tell them apart, as far as I can tell, is the underscore in the name. I can use that but we have a couple of real VMs that have underscores so that's not possible for us. I know we can put the VMs in a folder/resource pool when we start the restore, but our service desk users can forget to do this and then the VMs don't go in the business view so don't get excluded...
Can we request a global option which can be enabled which would set Veeam B&R tags for these VMs with something in vCenter so we can use that? By global option I mean in the main B&R settings, so that it isn't something users have to select when starting a restore.

3. Having created a business view based on the VM folder to test it I find the VMs don't appear in the business view straight away. The VMs appear in the VeeamONE dashboard and generate an email alert. Only after the collection job has run will they appear in the business view. Why are new VMs that VeeamONE see's not evaluated at the time they appear?

Thanks

Chris

[Shestakov]

Hi Chris,

That's an interesting case.
What version are you at?

Like your idea of VBR tag / postfix or something to differentiate such VMs.

What threshold do you have for the mentioned VM with no backups alarm? Is it lower than the time Veeam ONE takes to categorize VMs to BV groups?
Thanks!

[ChrisGundry]

Hi Nikita

We are on 9.5 U4 for VeeamONE and B&R.

The 'VM with no backups' alarm is 24hrs for a warning and 48hrs for error currently, although we plan to reduce that shortly. The collection task is set to run every x minutes, the most frequent it is able to be run. When new temp VMs appear they are not put into the relevent business view's until the collection task runs and completes.
Also note that this applies to the 'VM power state' alarm as well, because the temp VMs are not powered on.

So regardless of if the temp VM is in the right folder, or had a tag etc it would not work as the engine works currently. It would appear in no business view as standard, generate an alarm, then when the collection task runs it would move it to the business view and clear the alarm.

What we want is a way for it to go straight into the business view, or bypass the need for a business view.

We have another use case for this as well. Citrix MCS, which uses a template VM to clone a new temp VM, the temp VM is modified some and then used to clone again to a load of new permanent servers. The temp VMs have the same issue as the Veeam B&R temp VM's, they are not powered on and have no backups, so they flag VeeamONE alarms and generate email alerts etc.

I think I am asking for a change in the way new VMs are handled in VeeamONE. Instead of waiting for the collection task to run they should be evaluated when they appear and be placed in the correct business view etc.

Thanks

[Shestakov]

For "VM powered-off" indeed it makes sense.
However most of the alarms have 5 min delay which is more than average business view categorization calculation takes. Anyway, we will double-check the behavior.
By the way, are you running Veeam ONE in Typical or Advanced scalability mode?
Thanks!

[ChrisGundry]

Hmm, yes, it does take some time for the alarms to appear, I never realized it was a deliberate 5 minute delay. In any case, it isn't working for us...

It is set to typical for us. We only have around 200 VMs which was well under the recommended limit for typical.

[Shestakov]

Right, you don't need Advanced scalability mode with 200 VMs.
If you look at the VM power status alarm rules, you can find out that it has the delay option with default = 5min

[ChrisGundry]

Yes, we do indeed have the 5 minute delay in the alarm. That itself is working, but the VM is not being put into a business view within that 5 minutes. The VM seems (because the VM will not go into a view then as soon as we complete the collection job it does) to only be put into a business view if the collection job is run. The collection job is set to run every 1 hour, which is the fastest possible.

So how do we fix it currently, or request that this be fixed ASAP in a future release? This behavior generates at least one alarm/email for us every single day due to instant recovery work, testing, Citrix MCS updates etc. If an alarm is generated a case is logged automatically, that case then has to be handled and processed. This is time consuming and looks bad on our stats when there is nothing actually wrong.

[Shestakov]

We are checking current behavior and possible solutions within R&D team. In my understanding alarms should not fire for new VMs until they are categorized.
I'll write back once we have a result.
Thanks

[Shestakov]

Chris,
I've talked to R&D. Categorization for 200 VMs should take less than 5 minutes.
So I would like to ask you contact Veeam support team to investigate the issue.
Once you do, please provide case number for us to follow the investigation.

[ChrisGundry]

OK. I will look to get a case raised when I get some time

[Shestakov]

ok. Please keep us informed