Veeam ONE is Veeam’s prized monitoring and reporting software for Veeam Backup & Replication, and it gives users insight into both their infrastructure components and job metrics. The release of Veeam ONE v12 and Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v7 also comes with the ability to monitor your Microsoft 365 backup environment as well. The best part is that this comes at no additional licensing cost since the monitoring of Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 inside Veeam ONE is completely free. This Veeam ONE integration gives you insight into your backups, proxies, repositories and so much more all in a single view, and it’s all accessible through several convenient vehicles. Read on to learn more about all of these new, great product integrations.
Why Monitoring and Reporting Microsoft 365 Backups Is Important
Having backups of your Microsoft 365 data is essential, but ensuring that your backups are working correctly and your backup components are in good health is equally important. When working with backups, monitoring additional factors that could indicate current or future problems beyond a binary pass-fail system is essential. This includes how long jobs take to complete, the amount of free space on repositories and your license information, which can all be critical information. Issues with these things lead to not just unexpected expenses but job and data failures as well. In many industries, there are regulations surrounding data retention, but with comprehensive reporting, your business can ensure you meet these requirements and avoid the consequences. Veeam ONE is able to monitor and report these components as well as many other aspects of the backup environment.
How to Configure Veeam ONE
Veeam ONE can be leveraged to monitor VMware infrastructure, Veeam Backup & Replication and NAS. Now with version 12, you can monitor Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 backups and components. Just like monitoring other components, getting started with Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 is as easy as adding a backup server.
To start, if you do not already have a Veeam ONE instance, download the Veeam ONE package and install the software on a dedicated server that meets your system requirements. The monitoring does not cost extra, but you do need to make sure that the right license was downloaded from the customer portal. Once installed, the steps to add Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 to a new or existing installation is the same and the steps to follow can be found in the user guide here. After the server or servers have been added, data will start populating in a matter of minutes.
Give the server some time to communicate with your end Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 instances and components before moving on to alarms and web clients, which will be covered next.
Customizable Reporting and Alarms
Veeam ONE allows you to generate customizable reports on the status of your Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 backups and components. These reports can be tailored to meet your specific needs and contain many powerful features that can aid in mitigating disasters or emerging situations. With this version, Veeam has 11 customizable alarms that are specific Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 environments. The full state of alarms can be found in the user guide. Each alarm details the reason it was triggered, possible ways to correct the issue and configurable advanced settings that hold the magic behind the client.
Each environment is different, so it’s possible to change the thresholds of each alarm to whatever you may expect in your ecosystem. There are granular settings for inclusion and exclusion based on the job and priority error or warning threshold in decending order. This can help you to define, know and remediate issues at the very moment your environment is operating outside of your expectations.
Arguably the most powerful action setting in this software is “actions”. This setting allows you to execute a script based on a set of parameters in conjunction with this alarm. This gives you the option to define automated remediation actions to problems that have known fixes. This script can do anything from triggering tickets to rebooting remote servers. It can be written as .bat or .ps as long as Windows can execute your script. This script can also be used to call other scripts on remote machines and run software, the possibilities are endless.
The next feature is very helpful in cases of tribal knowledge and custom setups. In addition to the knowledge base we provide in each alarm setup, you also have the option to add additional information that may be helpful in cases where the alarm is triggered. These could be notes on phone numbers, custom patches provided from support, dates when other patches were done or notes about expected data increases on certain days. It’s your environment and you know it best, but everyone deserves a break and notes like this help.
Beyond just configuring these 11 alarms, you can also copy and clone these alarms for further granular control. Adding notifications, defining which servers or jobs are affected by these alarms in assignments and custom suppression windows can be done as well. The possibities are almost endless, but likely include just what you need.
Web Client and Dashboards
The last feature we will talk about is the web client, or what I call the “coffee window”. The web client is an html interface that offers customizable dashboards and reports you can share to any key stakeholders. This predefined dashboard can be a great way to remotely log in and make sure your environment is in working order as you sip your coffee in the morning. You can also create custom dashboards with limited scopes for users or administrators who are in charge of a portion of your environment. Reports can also be easily configured and run in defined intervals with copies sent to key stakeholders from a portal. This portal makes it possible for you quickly spot check your ecosystem at any time from any device.
Reports
Veeam ONE offer many insights into critical backup functions in an easy-to-read forma. These layouts also help easily identify trends that you may otherwise mis. A great example of this is the backup service level agreement (SLA) compliance report that allows you to run spot checks on backup job duration. This report can define timelines, thresholds and types of objects, including users or sites that are meeting objectives that are expected for backup competition time. Objects that don’t meet these meeting expected backup times can mean bigger issues if your business is planning on growing or needs to be mindful of bandwidth.
Conclusion
Saying there is more than meets the eye with Veeam ONE is be an understatement. Veeam ONE offers advanced monitoring, custom reporting, remote dashboards, threshold remediation actions and so much more. With the drop of Veeam ONE v12 and Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 v7, you can now get all of these features in your Microsoft 365 backups for free. For more information on getting started with Veeam ONE, I highly recommend checking out this post from my colleague Kirsten Stoner on the Community Hub, 5 Steps to Getting Started with Veeam ONE.