Veeam Management Pack for System Center 7.0 R2 Update

Release notes for Veeam Management Pack for System Center 7.0 R2 Update

Please confirm you are using Veeam MP version 6.0, 6.5 or 7.0  prior to installing this patch. You can check this in SCOM Console | Administration | Management Packs. 

The 7.0 GA version of Veeam MPs will be 7.0.0.1862 (although the Veeam Widget Library MP may be version 7.0.0.1863).

After upgrading your build version will be 7.0.0.1913. Veeam Hyper-V Views MP and Veeam Hyper-V Monitoring MP version will be 7.0.0.1914.

New features:

Veeam VMware High-Granularity management pack

In Veeam Management Pack 7.0 R2, VMware performance metrics that were not directly used in dashboards, reports or monitors were moved to the Veeam VMware High-Granularity MP. This MP is not installed by default and can be considered optional. It is available in the Veeam MP Resource Kit.
This change was introduced to improve Ops Mgr overall performance and reduce impact of the Veeam MP. The required database space for Veeam MP in the Ops Mgr operational database can be reduced by 50% or more in some configurations. 

The performance collection rules in the Veeam VMware High-Granularity MP are required only for advanced performance analysis of the VMware vSphere environment. It is only recommended to import this MP for detailed performance analysis of specific issues on given Cluster(s), Host(s) or VM(s), as the additional granular metric collection can significantly increase the footprint of Veeam MP in the Ops Mgr databases.

For more information on the Veeam VMware High-Granularity MP, see the Resource Kit Guide.

Topology views optimized and new diagram dashboards added

Veeam MP 7.0 for System Center built a very detailed and deep VMware and/or Hyper-V topology which extended from clusters, through the physical host servers, to the virtual machines, and even included the Ops Mgr agents running inside the virtual machines (if present). In large environments, the depth of this topology could be an issue for Ops Mgr to maintain and could cause SQL performance issues (specifically in the RecursiveMembership table), including problems with insertion/update of discovery data. 

In Veeam Management Pack 7.0 R2, the relationship between a VM and the Ops Mgr Agent (Windows Computer object), was replaced by discovering a relationship between a VM and the specific Veeam MP object “Ops Mgr Agent in VM” which is discovered inside each Windows OS. Because this object (unlike Windows Computer object) does not have any child topology objects, the overall Veeam topology depth and total number of contained objects is greatly reduced, which addresses the SQL performance issue. 

Supporting the new topology method, two new diagrammatic dashboards were introduced — Apps on this VM, and Host for this VM. These are available in the Tasks pane of the Ops Mgr console in context of a Virtual Machine object or an Ops Mgr Agent in VM object, allowing app-to-metal and metal-to-app views.
To see how this update influenced Veeam MP topology diagram views, see the Veeam MP for VMware Operations Guide and Veeam MP for Hyper-V User Guide.

New Right-Sizing report leveraging Ops Mgr agent data

Veeam Management Pack 7.0 R2 introduces a new report Virtual Machines. Right-Sizing – VMs Undersized for Memory and CPU (Ops Mgr agent data) report.
This report helps you to detect virtual machines that have less allocated vRAM or vCPU resources than they require. The report will only support VMs that run Ops Mgr agents inside the virtualized OS (for VMs without agents, use the Undersized VMs report that was present in previous releases).
The new report analyzes historical data on % Memory Used and % Processor Time performance metric values collected by the Ops Mgr agent running in the guest OS. These metrics gathered inside the guest OS provide better recommendations for right-sizing (especially in terms of memory usage). 
For more information on the Virtual Machines. Right-Sizing – VMs Undersized for Memory and CPU (Ops Mgr agent data) report, see Veeam MP for VMware Operations Guide.

Support for Ops Mgr 2012 R2 UR4 and Ops Mgr 2012 SP1 UR8

Veeam MP for System Center now supports Update Rollup 4 for System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager and Update Rollup 8 for System Center 2012 SP1 Operations Manager.

Non-English locales supported for Windows Server Hyper-V

Veeam MP for Hyper-V now supports localized versions of Windows Server Hyper-V and Hyper-V servers with Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Spanish and Swedish locales.

New Hyper-V heatmap dashboards added

Veeam MP for Hyper-V includes two new heatmap dashboards grouped by Host instead of by CSV:

•    Heatmap - VM Storage and Checkpoints (by Host) dashboard shows allocated storage space and snapshot age for virtual machines grouped by Host. This allows viewing of VMs which run only on host local storage.
•    Heatmap - VM Storage and Power (by Host) dashboard shows used storage space and the state of virtual machines grouped by Host. This allows viewing of VMs which run only on host local storage.

Also new are a Local Storage Topology diagram and a Hyper-V Local Storage state dashboard.

All above new dashboards are available in the view folder Veeam for Hyper-V \ Storage.

Support for Veeam Backup & Replication 8.0

MP for Veeam Backup & Replication now supports Veeam Backup & Replication v8.0.

Resolved Issues

Veeam MP for VMware

• Ops Mgr SP1 UR2 web console unexpected error System.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException: [ReflectionTypeLoad_LoadFailed]

After you installed or upgraded to Veeam MP 7.0, the Ops Mgr 2012 SP1 UR2 web console was unable to load and showed an unexpected error. In Veeam MP 7.0 R2, the issue was resolved.

• Duplicated warning alerts caused by loss or degradation of datastore storage path redundancy

A loss or degraded redundancy on storage paths connected to a datastore produced a storage connectivity issue event with the ‘Warning’ severity. This event caused both the ‘Veeam VMware: Host HBA Path Status’ monitor and the ‘Veeam VMware: vSphere Host Storage Warning’ rule to trigger duplicate alerts. In Veeam MP 7.0 R2, the issue was resolved; now only the monitor is triggered.

• Duplicated warning alerts caused by loss or degradation of network link redundancy

A loss or degraded redundancy on network links to a virtual switch produced a network connectivity issue event with the ‘Warning’ severity. This event caused both the ‘Veeam VMware: Network connectivity problem on VSwitch’ monitor and the ‘Veeam VMware: vSphere Host Network Warning’ rule to trigger duplicate alerts. In Veeam MP 7.0 R2, the issue was resolved; now only the monitor is triggered.

Veeam MP for Hyper-V

• SCVMM on Management Server not discovered

In version 7, Veeam MP did not support configurations where SCVMM was installed on the same machine as the Ops Mgr Management Server, as SCVMM-specific topology objects could not be discovered. In Veeam MP 7.0 R2, the issue was resolved.

• Traffic Lights widgets show no data

After you performed an upgrade to Update Rollup 3 for Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, Hyper-V Traffic Light widgets were empty for metrics whose name ended with “%”. In Veeam MP 7.0 R2, the issue was resolved by renaming the following metrics:

Target	Old Name	New Name
Host	Memory Used %	% Memory Used
	Average Pressure %	% Memory Pressure
Cluster	Memory Used %	% Memory Used
	CPU Used %	% CPU Used
CSV	Free Space %	% Free Space
Local Volume	Free Space %	% Free Space
VM	Average Pressure %	% Memory Pressure

MP for Veeam Backup & Replication

• ​Renamed backup repositories not discovered

In version 7, MP for Veeam Backup & Replication was not able to discover backup repositories which have been renamed or connected under a different name in Veeam Backup & Replication console. In Veeam MP 7.0 R2, the issue was resolved.

Known issues:

Veeam MP for VMware

• Some performance report metrics not displayed after upgrade

In Veeam Management Pack 7.0 R2, some performance collection rules were removed from the default Veeam VMware Monitoring MP and added to the optional Veeam VMware High-Granularity MP.As a result, after you upgrade to Veeam MP 7.0 R2, Veeam VMware Performance History Reports will display historical performance statistics for certain high-granularity metrics up until the upgrade date only. 

This behavior is expected and by design.

For the full list of metrics moved to the Veeam VMware High-Granularity MP see the Veeam MP for System Center Resource Kit Guide.

• ‘VMwareCluster.totalvMotions’ performance metric values not collected

VMware Collectors do not collect VMwareCluster.totalvMotions metric values. This causes the _vMotions performance view (located under the vSphere Cluster > Performance Views > vm node of the Veeam for VMware tree) and the vSphere Clusters. Number of Virtual Machine report to show zero VMwareCluster.totalvMotions metric values for all clusters.

This is a known issue that will be addressed in the next release.

• Veeam VMware Collector Auto-Deployment MP has a lower build number than other Veeam MPs

The Veeam VMware Collector Auto-Deployment MP has build number 7.0.0.1862 whereas other Veeam MPs have build 7.0.0.1911. This is expected as the Auto-deployment MP was not modified for the R2 release. 

• Unexpected behavior of vSphere HA virtual machine monitoring error

The ‘Veeam VMware: vSphere HA virtual machine monitoring Alarm’ monitor resolves when you acknowledge the alarm in the vSphere Client, not when you manually clear it.

Veeam MP for Hyper-V

• False alerts from ‘Veeam Hyper-V VM Checkpoint Age’ monitor 

There is a known Microsoft Hyper-V bug that causes VM snapshots to be timestamped as 01/01/1601 after a host reboot. This can cause the metric Hyper-V VM Checkpoints/AgeHours to be incorrect which will cause the Veeam Hyper-V: VM Checkpoint Analysis monitor to fire an alert stating incorrect snapshot age.

For more details on the issue, see the Microsoft Windows Server Forum.

MP for Veeam Backup & Replication

• ‘_Total Instance’ value of ‘CPU Used %’ metric for Veeam backup proxy exceeds 100%

The Veeam Backup Proxy CPU Used % rule collects the performance metric CPU Used % as a total of average CPU usage for all processes running on the Veeam backup proxy server. When the backup proxy is overloaded, the _Total instance may be reported to be higher than 100%.

 

Download Veeam Management Pack for System Center 7.0 R2 Update here.