Data is at the forefront of what drives organizations today. It drives businesses, powering operations, assisting with decision making and providing a competitive edge. At its core, Veeam Data Platform protects organization’s data, giving it resiliency and the strength to bounce back from disruption. To achieve ultimate resiliency, organizations need to encompass more than just backup, they need to think about recovery, security, intelligence and automation. With this, the monitoring and analytics provided within the Platform, empowers organizations to shift from reactive to proactive data resilience. This latest release continues to innovate, giving customers more options on how they want to consume Veeam.
Veeam is all about giving customers choice, giving them the option to self-manage their backup environment, consume it as-a-Service, or utilize a Service Provider to help them manage data protection operations. With the latest news from Veeam, now you can utilize the Veeam Software Appliance to protect your data. This Linux-based appliance provides a pre-built, pre-hardened, and predictable backup solution for customers. To read more about this offering, check out Tyler’s blog post.
If you are already on board with the Veeam Software Appliance and you utilize monitoring and analytics through Veeam ONE, or even if you want to check out Veeam ONE for the first time, then this post is for you. As with most exciting releases, the core components integral to the platform, also receive updates to continue to support each other, and provide better utilization of all the new features. To start monitoring the Veeam Software Appliance, there are a couple different steps that you will need to configure. Let’s get started on just how to do this in your environment.
Connecting Veeam Software Appliance and Veeam ONE
First off, you’ve completed the installation of the Veeam Software Appliance and have started protecting your critical workloads, now it’s time to get connected to Veeam ONE. To support the Veeam Software Appliance, you need to upgrade or install Veeam ONE V13. This is available to you through my.veeam.com, under product subscriptions. Once you have upgraded or installed Veeam ONE we can get started
The first thing you may do is hop into Veeam ONE, and try to add the Veeam Software Appliance the traditional way you are used to. However, you get an error:
Don’t fret! This is because the Veeam Software Appliance is pre-hardened, meaning that you will need to open the connection to the appliance before you are able to add your backup server into Veeam ONE.
Accessing Host Management Console
To do this, the first step is logging into the Host Management Console of the Veeam Software Appliance. This can be accessed through the configuration settings of the web console or through IP address directly.
The above screenshot shows where you can access the Host Management Console through the Web Client.
Once logged into the Veeam Host Management Console, you need to navigate to the Integration pane and navigate to Backup Infrastructure. From here, you can see Data Collection options. This is where you will allow the host to be registered for monitoring and management systems. You will need to submit a request to allow the host to accept connections. This will allow remote connections for the next 60 minutes.
If you have the Security Officer role configured, this role will need to approve this action. If you are not familiar with this setting, the Security Officer is a role designed to protect your environment against unauthorized changes. This role can only approve changes but cannot initiate them and is configured during installation. The goal of this new role is to add an extra layer of protection against cyber-attacks.
From here, you will need to notify the Security Officer, granted this access, that you have submitted a request and it will need to be approved before you can collect data from the backup environment. Once the security officer has logged into the Host Management Console, they will see all the pending actions they need to approve to move forward.
Connecting to the Veeam ONE Web Client
Once approved and the connection is open for Data Collection, there are two ways you can connect the Veeam Software Appliance to Veeam ONE. The first option is to navigate to the Veeam ONE web client. Open the configuration settings, find ‘Data Collection’ and add the Veeam Software Appliance as a new data source.
The screenshot above shows the Veeam ONE web client. The next step is just completing the prompts in the ‘Add server’ wizard and clicking finish.
Connecting Veeam Software Appliance through Veeam Analytics Service Package
In some situations, especially in bigger environments, the amount of time the data collection period is open may not be long enough. For this you can download the Veeam Analytics Service Package and have the backup team upload bundle and add the connection when they are ready.
To do this, in the Veeam ONE Web Client, navigate to the Data Collection tab. From here, at the top of the screen you see several options. Select Veeam Analytics Service, go to Download Package, and select Linux.
This will then download the Veeam Analytics Service Bundle allowing you to send this bundle to the backup team. From there, they will need to login to the Host Management Console, open the data collection to accept remote connections.
They will need to perform the same steps as listed previously, notifying the Security Officer to approve the action. Once approved, navigate to the Update Manager in the Host Management Console.
At the bottom of the screen, you see ‘Upload a hotfix’ this is where you will add in the Veeam Analytics Service package. Once uploaded, it will prompt you to install the package now.
The Veeam ONE server will start performing tasks to be able to collect data on your backup environment. This will then start installing the service on your Veeam Software Appliance.
If you switch back over to the Veeam ONE Web Client, you will see all the actions being performed to be able to start monitoring your backup environment.
Once all the tasks are completed, you can start monitoring your backup environment and gain all the benefits of the monitoring and analytics available in v13.
Monitoring the Veeam Software Appliance Made Easy!
The Veeam Software Appliance is just another way to consume and manage your Veeam backup experience. Not only that, Veeam ONE supports the appliance right from the start, so you don’t lose out on the powerful monitoring and analytics you need to ensure protection, compliance, and efficiency. Veeam ONE is the perfect tool to monitor and notify you about your backup operations and will continue to support all your data needs. Have you checked out the Veeam Software Appliance yet? Better yet, I would love to hear your experience with navigating Veeam ONE. Leave a comment below with your thoughts.