The
rapid growth of virtualization has created complex IT environments that are
becoming increasingly harder to manage. Part of that management challenge comes
from hastily deployed products, which often lack the proper deployment documentation
needed to monitor the virtual infrastructure in place.
Veeam
Software aims to bring order to that documentation and management chaos, at
least for VMware vSphere-powered infrastructures. Veeam Reporter 4.0 focuses on
three categories of information: reporting, change management and capacity
planning.
All
in all, I found Veeam Reporter 4.0 easy to install and use. The product
deserves high marks for its graphical reporting capabilities and the ease with
which reports can be generated. There are several wizards that help with
installation, setup and reporting that newbie users will appreciate. However, I
would prefer a little more automation when it comes to collecting data, and
perhaps a real-time method of gathering data from VMware's vCenter and the
various objects on the network. The product is priced at an affordable $375 per
server socket and is currently available from Veeam Software and its authorized
resellers.
Veeam
Reporter 4.0's capabilities make it useful for understanding complex virtual
environments. First and foremost is the reporting capability, which is now
based upon Microsoft SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services). I was pleasantly
surprised at the breadth and depth of reports offered; perhaps
"reports" is not the correct word to use here, as the software blends
monitoring with static reporting to create a visual, interactive representation
of the infrastructure. Regardless, the reports or screens offered a vast array
of details specific to virtualized environments and supported filtering,
drill-down and customization options.
I
found the best place to start with an evaluation was the dashboard, which was
intuitive and could be customized, a powerful feature. It was also very easy to
set up. I simply had to drag and drop report icons onto the dashboard to
activate the reports. A multitude of options are available; I selected CPU
usage, host performance and storage utilization. Having those reports on the
dashboard gave me a quick picture of the load placed on the virtual infrastructure
and its general health, and gave me a good starting point from which to track
down performance and utilization problems. What's more, I was able to judge at
a glance how well the infrastructure was meeting user demands throughout the
day.
Of
course, helping to make an IT administrator's day a little easier is only part
of Veeam Reporter 4.0's functions. The other part of management puzzle involves
business needs and policies, and Veeam Reporter 4.0 also tackles the needs of
bean counters and department managers. For example, I was able to create
reports for storage utilization by department, storage utilization by cluster
and memory usage by departmental virtual machine. Each of those reports would
have value when it came to IT budgeting for departmental charges, SLAs
(service-level agreements) or business unit resource utilization. That is only
a small sample of the reports of this type available.
Some
of these capabilities are only to be expected. Where Version 4.0 differs from
earlier versions of Veeam Reporter and from competing products is in the
adoption of a new reporting engine, which uses Microsoft's SSRS. The move to
SSRS Web-enables Veeam Reporter 4.0, adds more reporting capabilities and
eliminates the reliance on third-party products to create reports. SSRS also
makes it possible to work with larger data sets and store more information, and
therein lies the real advantage of Version 4.0—improved change management.
Veeam
Reporter 4.0 is able to gather information from vCenter and store that
information, recording every change and activity performed. That data goes into
reports that provide a detailed history of changes made. Change management is a
powerful tool for troubleshooting complex problems. To test Veeam's change
management capabilities, I made some changes to a few hosts, reducing the
amount of memory and storage available, which harmed performance.
After
the changes, I ran a performance report. Noting that VM performance was down, I
ran a configuration report that highlighted the changes made to the host. With
that information, I was able to quickly determine what changes were made and
isolate the problem. While my experiment was very basic, it does highlight one
of the biggest improvements offered by Version 4.0. Applying that change
management reporting capability to a multisite, multi-vCenter environment could
potentially save administrators countless hours when troubleshooting a thorny
problem, especially if the change was made automatically by vCenter itself.
To
use the change management capability, there are a few prerequisites, which also
have an impact on most of the reporting features. First of all, you will need
to set up data-gathering jobs—I defined several "collection jobs" to
gather information from my vCenter. Those collection jobs are automated and are
executed based upon a schedule. Collection jobs require a bit of information to
function, such as host name, credentials and a scope. You have multiple options
when you create a collection job, including querying a single server, a group
of servers or a defined cluster. Collection jobs can be scheduled to run at a
certain time of day or at set intervals, such as every 4 hours. I found that
more frequent collections provide more usable data, although that does increase
the load on the Veeam Reporter system. It will take some experimentation to
determine what collection schedule works best for a given environment.
Reports
follow a scheduling model as well, and have a delivery component. For example,
I set up a change management report that was scheduled to be sent as a PDF file
to my e-mail account every day at 8:00 a.m. Of course, there are many more
options when it comes to defining and scheduling a reporting job.
Administrators will need to decide which reports are most useful to them and
the frequency of those reports.
Scheduling
is not required, but does make life a little easier—all collection jobs and
reports can be manually executed if need be, and most administrators will
probably schedule collection jobs, but manually execute reports.
Veeam
Software touts capacity planning as one of the most impressive features of the
product, and I tend to agree. Veeam Reporter 4.0 offers several reports that
show usage trends and lend themselves well to predicting capacity needs. For
example, a storage report shows the amount of storage used, who is using it and
what is available; that report can be used as a guide to reallocate or deploy
or more storage. The same can be said for reports on CPU usage, memory usage,
number of VMs and so on. That information, packaged into an Excel spreadsheet,
becomes very helpful when identifying trends and planning for capacity.
I
found the infrastructure reports, which create a visual representation of the
virtual infrastructure, to be very useful as well. The reports can be generated
online and exported as a PDF file, Excel spreadsheet or Visio diagram.
Infrastructure reporting gathers up all of the vCenter object inventory and
creates an annotated diagram of the network. I was able to modify the diagram
by moving objects around and adding additional information. Infrastructure
reporting will prove to be a powerful documentation and support tool, simply
because it gives the network a "face."
Virtualization Technology News & Reviews 
