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Veeam ONE Client - základy monitoringu

Veeam ONE Client - monitoring basics

| Petr Bouška - Samuraj |
The Veeam ONE solution uses a rich client that enables monitoring of backup and virtual infrastructure. And a web client that provides dashboards and reports. In this article, we'll look at the basic usage and features of the rich Veeam ONE Client for infrastructure monitoring and management. An important part of the solution are alarms that alert you to events, changes and problems.
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Note: The description in the article is based on Veeam ONE 12.1.

Documentation

Veeam ONE Client interface and options for monitoring and management

Components of virtual and backup infrastructure are arranged in a tree structure. The parent object displays summary information about subordinates. We can browse the hierarchical list of infrastructure objects in the left inventory panel. At the bottom, we switch between different views, such as Veeam Backup & Replication and Virtual Infrastructure.

Next to it is the information panel, which is the main work area where selected information is displayed. It contains a number of tabs that switch between various Veeam ONE Client dashboards. Available dashboards differ depending on the selected object in the inventory tree.

Veeam ONE Client - uživatelské rozhraní (Veeam Backup & Replication)

Main (common) dashboards

  • Summary - summary information (health, backup status, performance) for the selected object or infrastructure segment
  • Alarms - we see triggered alarms, can monitor alarm history, resolve and acknowledge alarms
  • Performance (Performance Charts) - graphs of key performance counter statistics, for virtual and backup infrastructure components down to individual VMs
  • Tasks & Events - displays tasks and events that occurred in the virtual infrastructure (loaded from vCenter, Event log, etc.), history of events that triggered a Veeam Backup & Replication alarm
  • Guest OS - for virtual infrastructure, viewing and controlling processes and services on VMs or servers, we must have Guest OS Credentials set up (entered) and meet other conditions, we can start and stop services, kill processes

Detailed descriptions of dashboards can be found in individual parts of the official documentation, such as Veeam Backup & Replication Monitoring and VMware vSphere Monitoring.

Veeam Backup & Replication Infrastructure

Below is a brief overview of selected infrastructure levels (components) in the inventory panel for the Veeam Backup & Replication area (view) and available dashboards. It is used to monitor backup infrastructure and data protection operations for workloads - VMs, computers, unstructured data, databases, and networks.

Note: Unfortunately, Veeam ONE does not work with classic backups created using Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN (Oracle RMAN Backup).

  • VBR Server (backup infrastructure)
    • Summary (backup job status, most used repositories and proxies), Alarms, Performance, Tasks & Events
    • Data Protection - overview of various types of backup jobs (VMs, computers, etc.), including status, last run date, duration (and average duration), transferred data, we can filter
Veeam ONE Client - Veeam Backup & Replication - Data Protection
  • Backup Repositories
    • Summary (information about storage occupancy, backup window utilization, capacity planning), Monthly Summary (by weeks instead of days), Alarms, Performance, Tasks & Events, Data Transfer (data transfer within Scale-Out Backup Repository)
    • Protected Data - contains a list of VMs, computers, and unstructured data whose backups are located on the given storage, including basic details
Veeam ONE Client - Veeam Backup & Replication - Protected Data
  • Backup Proxies
    • Summary (processed disks, transferred data, backup window utilization), Monthly Summary (by weeks instead of days), Alarms, Performance, Tasks & Events
  • WAN Accelerators
    • Summary (acceleration efficiency, transferred data), Alarms, Performance, Tasks & Events

Virtual Infrastructure

Below is a brief overview of selected infrastructure levels (components) in the inventory panel for the Virtual Infrastructure area (view) and available dashboards. Some dashboards are only available for a specific platform (VMware, Hyper-V) or exact infrastructure component.

  • Virtual Infrastructure - virtual infrastructure containers (cluster, vCenter Server, SCVMM, datacenter, etc.)
    • Summary (server status, storage, VMs, latest alarms, alarms by object, Business View groups), Alarms, Performance, Tasks & Events, Top Objects (consumes most and least resources), Guest OS, Hardware (for ESXi)
    • Infrastructure Objects - list of VMs, or servers and storage located on the given server (container), contains a number of interesting parameters
Veeam ONE Client - Virtual Infrastructure - Infrastructure Objects
  • Virtualization Servers (Host) - ESXi host or Hyper-V host and their subordinate objects
    • almost the same as virtual infrastructure, summary additionally includes resource utilization
  • Resources (Virtual Machine)
    • Summary (VM status, memory, CPU and disk usage, parent object status, latest alarms, Business View groups), Alarms, Performance, Tasks & Events, Guest OS, Console (Hyper-V VM Console)
    • right-clicking on a VM gives us various options in the context menu, for example Open Console, which launches VMware Remote Console (VMRC)
  • Datastores / Cluster Shared Volumes (storage)
    • Summary (server status, VMs, disk space usage, latest disk latency, latest alarms, Business View groups), Alarms, Performance, Tasks & Events
    • Infrastructure Objects - list of VMs located on the given storage

Note: So far, I've only tried to use the Hardware info for ESXi and Hyper-V Console, but neither function worked for me.

Business View

Allows to organize objects of virtual and backup infrastructure (clusters, servers, VMs, storage, objects backed up by agent) into categories and groups. Each category contains one or more groups.

  • Category - logical division of infrastructure
  • Group - collection of objects with the same properties or criteria (for example, by department, purpose, SLA, number of vCPUs)

By default, Veeam ONE Client categorizes objects into predefined groups. We can modify this setting or create custom groups.

Categorization is primarily by object type and platform. Then we divide into groups using

  • Single-Parameter Categorization - creating groups based on one property, a group is automatically created for each unique value
  • Multiple-Condition Categorization - combination of multiple properties to create groups, we can manually enter conditions and logical operators for each group
  • Grouping Expressions - we manually enter a custom expression to create groups
Veeam ONE Client - Business View

Working with Alarms

Alert users to important events, significant changes and potential problems in the managed environment. Veeam ONE contains a set of predefined alarms that we can modify or create new ones. Predefined alarms are based on best practices and contain advice (Knowledge Base) for solving the problem. We can set up remediation actions that automatically perform a certain operation.

Note: Predefined alarm values may not always suit us, so it's good to adjust them for our environment. Alternatively, we can turn off some alarms (Disable).

How Alarms Work

Veeam ONE collects information about objects in the environment and checks this data against alarm settings. If the behavior or state of an object meets the alarm criteria, or a certain event occurred, it triggers an alarm with a defined severity level. Veeam ONE Client displays information about the alarm and the affected object. We can view, acknowledge or resolve the alarm.

Veeam ONE can also perform alarm notification (via email or SNMP trap). If the event, state, or condition is resolved, the alarm status is updated.

Veeam ONE Client - Alarm Management

Alarm Management and Configuration

We can manage and create alarms in the Alarm Management view.

Alarm configuration contains several parts:

  • General - platform, type, name, enabling the alarm
  • Rules
    • one or more assigned rules (connected using AND or OR) that define conditions for triggering the alarm
    • can be a specific event, state change, resource utilization, or based on an existing alarm
    • we assign a certain severity level (Error (red), Warning (yellow), Resolved (green), Information (blue))
  • Assignment - we assign the alarm to specific infrastructure objects, can be assigned to a specific object, container, or infrastructure level (used by predefined alarms), we can also exclude specific objects
  • Notification - sending a notification when triggering or changing the state of an alarm (set severity), can be sending an email to the default group (used by predefined alarms) or specific recipients, SNMP trap, Syslog message, ServiceNow incident, or script execution
  • Actions - for automating problem solving, we can set remediation actions that run when an alarm is triggered, can be script execution or a predefined action
  • Suppress - we can pause the alarm for a specific time period
  • Knowledge Base - description of the problem and possible solutions

Configuring Alarm Notifications

So that we don't have to constantly monitor Veeam ONE Client for appearing alarms, it's good to set up sending notifications typically to email (other options include SNMP trap, Syslog message, ServiceNow incident).

To send email messages, we must set up an SMTP server in the main menu option Settings - Server Settings - Mail Server Settings. We can use SMTP with SSL, Basic Authentication, Modern Authentication (M365, GMail).

The next step is to set up notification policies in the main menu option Settings - Server Settings - Notification Policy. We set the default group for email notifications, frequency of sending alerts, and other options.

Under Configure, we set recipient addresses (we can enter multiple addresses separated by commas or semicolons) and the severity level for sending notifications. Under Edit template, we can modify the template for the email content. We can activate/deactivate whether an email is sent when an alarm is resolved.

Veeam ONE Client - Notification Policy

Within Email notification policies, we can adjust the frequency of sending notifications. We have two policies here and can change the policy assignment to objects.

  • Mission Critical - is by default assigned to all infrastructure objects, sends a message immediately when a new alarm is created or when the state of an existing alarm changes
  • Other - sends summary notifications for a specific time interval (30 minutes by default)

After setting up SMTP and the default recipient group, emails will automatically start sending from all active predefined alarms. We can adjust recipients for individual alarms.

Predefined Alarms

Prepared alarms cover a number of areas. Some may activate frequently and need to be adjusted or turned off.

Within the virtual infrastructure, I most often encounter Guest disk space. A warning at 10% free space may be too high in some cases. We can adjust the preset value.

In the case of backup infrastructure, it's Suspicious incremental backup size and Unusual job duration. It's interesting to monitor whether the size (or duration) of an incremental backup differs from the previous one, but in practice, there are probably many situations where this is legitimate (such as operating system updates).

Some prepared alarms are turned off, and we might find one that's useful to turn on. For example, Restore Activity, which sends an alert when a restore occurs.

For Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam ONE has the Veeam Intelligent Diagnostics feature available. This allows automatic detection of known issues in backup configuration or performance. It also alerts to checks from the Security & Compliance Analyzer that ended with an error or warning.

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