Veeam ONE is essentially a management program, providing monitoring, reporting and alerting for your virtual infrastructure, whether that be Hyper-V or VMware. The module for this course is broken down into 9 different sub modules, so lets look at each one in turn.
Auto Discovery of Backup and Virtual Infrastructure
During the initial configuration of Veeam ONE users are prompted to chose and add their virtual infrastructure type – the options presented are
- VMware vCenter Server
- Hyper-V Host, Failover Cluster or SCVMM server
- Skip Virtual infrastructure configuration
After selecting your desired virtual infrastructure you will be prompted for it’s name, either IP or FQDN, and some credentials to connect – along with the required port to connect on. After installation we have the ability add other types of servers such as a standalone ESXi host and a vCloud Director server on the inventory pane inside the Infrastructure view.
Once completed the initial configuration, the servers, both vSphere, Hyper-V or Veeam that you have setup during the installation will be propagated to all Veeam ONE components, such as monitor, reporter and business view and data will begin being collected immediately as well as during its default scheduled time (weekdays @ 3 am).
Once a connection has been established Veeam ONE will start pulling information and data on the top level scope you’ve added, plus all children. Individual hosts/clusters can be excluded after the face from the Monitored Hosts tab. Subsequently, datastores can be excluded as well on the Monitored Datastores tab. If you want to exclude certain VMs it is done a little differently. Instead we use rules to exclude VMs. By default an inclusion rule that adds all VMs is configured. If you want to establish another inclusion rule, then you must disable this default rule. You do not need to do this when creating exclusion rules. You can create rules based on the following criteria.
- By object name – add/exclude VMs based on VM name
- By infrastructure location – Apply rule that applies to VMs only within a certain hierarchy of the infrastructure.
When creating our rules we can use the * and/or the ? wildcard. The * stands for zero or more characters where the ? stands for just a single character. If adding multiple conditions to a VM you need to specify whether you would like to apply the rule if any condition evaluates to true or if all conditions evaluate to true.
When prompted to add your Backup Infrastructure you simply need to pass the FQDN Name of either your Veeam Backup & Replication server or your Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager server and pass the required credentials. You also have the ability to skip this step and add Veeam later. If we connect a Backup & Replication server, data for the job sessions for the previous week is collected. If we add an Enterprise Manager instance, Veeam ONE first builds a hierarchy of Veeam B&R servers, then collects the data for the job sessions for the previous week from each one of them.
Business Categorization
Categorization within Veeam ONE is done by a the Business View component which is installed alongside everything. Business view allows you to create categorization models and values to help organize your infrastructure and display your infrastructure from a business standpoint. This completely integrates into Veeam ONE Monitor and Reporter, so any groups you create within Business View will be available in the other Veeam ONE components.
Some examples of categories one might create in Veeam ONE Business View are…
- Business Unit,
- Department
- Location
- Purpose
- SLA
Business View also supports reading and writing vSphere tags as well, meaning you can map business view categories and groups to vSphere tags and vice versa. That said there are some default out of the box categories that Business View comes with..
- Datastore – groups VMs by their datastore
- Last Backup Date – dynamically groups VMs by the age of the latest backup or replica restore point created
- Sample Business View Category – dynamically groups VMs by name
- SLA – static groups for all types of virtual infrastructure objects. Includes two groups; Mission Critical and Other
- Storage Type – dynamically groups storage objects by type.
- VM Network – dynamically groups VMs by connected network
- VMs with Snapshots – dynamically groups VMs with snapshots by snapshot age.
You can add more custom categories, but keep in mind the maximum number of categories Veeam ONE supports is 25.
Pre-Defined Alerting
Veeam ONE Monitor comes with over 150 predefined alarms that can alert you on almost every aspect of your virtual and backup infrastructures. In terms of data protection there are alarms already setup to…
- connectivity issues an inability of backup infrastructure components to communicate with each other.
- state of the VBR software installed on infrastructure components
- Failing of jobs or jobs completed with warnings
- Configuration issues, such as repositories running out of space
- Long running jobs that exceed the backup window
- License and pre-paid support expirations.
Alarms within Veeam ONE work in the following way
- When Veeam ONE monitor detects that the behavior or state of an object meets an alarm criteria, it triggers the alarm with the corresponding severity level
- Once triggered, Monitor console will display the alarm details and associated information in regards to the alarm. At this point you can view, acknowledge, or resolve the alarm
- After the alarm has fired, Monitor performs a responsive action; email, SNMP, and/or running a custom script.
- Once the alarm has been resolved, Monitor updates the alarm status within the console.
- If the state or condition returns to normal, Monitor will send a notification with the updated status.
Each alarm has rules associated with it that are used to trigger the alarm. Each alarm can have up to 8 rules which are linked together either by AND or OR operators. The rules can be setup as the following types of triggers.
- Event-Based Rules – alert when specific events that occur in the backup or virtual infrastructure. These can be events issued by the hypervisor, or by Veeam Backup & Replication.
- Rules for a specific condition or state – these are rules that trigger when a condition is met, or a state has changed on your infrastructure objects.
Alarms also have a severity level attached to them of one of the following
- Error (red) – indicates a critical situation or major problem
- Warning (yellow) – indicates a potential problem or non critical issue. Has the potential to move to an Error (red) if left unresolved.
- Resolved (green) – indicates that the issue or alarm has been eliminated because of the changed conditions.
- Information (blue) – indicates general information about the specific condition.
Alarms can be associated to objects by applying them directly to the object, on a group level using groups from Business View, or on the Infrastructure level by applying an alarm to all of a certain object type within the environment.
Interesting and testable tidbits about Veeam ONE Auto Discovery, Business View and Alarms
- Cannot add a single ESXi host during the initial install, only vCenter Server. ESXi and vCloud Directory are available to be added only after the initial install.
- Ability to skip adding the infrastructure configuration during the install.
- Backup Infrastructure can be added by either the Veeam Backup & Replication Server or the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager.
- The default data collection period for reporter and business view is weekdays @ 3am. If at the end of an installation data will begin being collected immediately.
- You cannot add the Backup Infrastructure inside of the Free edition of Veeam ONE UNLESS your VBR is licensed as a cloud connect only server.
- When adding a VBR server, data is collected for the previous week only on all job sessions.
- The maximum number of categories that Veeam ONE Business View supports is 25.
- Each monitor alarm can have up to 8 rules associated with it.
