RaviTech: Veeam One - Part One

I have been working on Veeam Products for sometime now and wanted to share my experience hoping my blogs will be helpful to anyone looking for info on Veeam. Since, Veeam offers a number of products, I have decided to write multiple posts that cover Installation, configuration and the features of all the products. I wanted to start with Veeam One for now.

Introduction to Veeam One:

Veeam One is a software to monitor VMware as well as Hyper-V Infrastructure.Good monitoring solution has become a necessity now that our Virtualized infrastructures are growing such rapidly. The monitoring charts and alarms provided with vCenter and Hyper-V feels definitely feels basic and a higher value monitoring/reporting solution seems essential.

Veeam One has 3 components:
a) Veeam One Monitor - Used to monitor Virtual Environments.
b) Veeam One Reporter - Used to find and isolate configuration issues and optimize resource allocation.
c) Veeam One Business View - Used to group infrastructure objects into different categories like configuration purpose.

You can refer to Veeam One Datasheet for VMware and Veeam One Datasheet for Hyper-V for additional details.

Eric Siebert has a good whitepaper regarding the VMware Management Challenges and how a monitoring solution can help us with these challenges. Definitely a good read.

Module 1 - Step by Step Installation of Veeam One.

1) To start with Installation you will need to download the executable from Veeam Website. You will require to register on Veeam webiste to download the installation file. I am installing " Veeam One V6.5 " on Windows 2008 64 bit version.

2) If you are using an external SQL Database, then you will have to create this before Installing " Veeam One". Following steps Explain how to Create an External SQL Database.

a) Login to your SQL Server using SQL authentication. Create a Blank Database using the name "VeeamOne".

b) We need to run a script against this Database which is provided by Veeam. The script is located in the "Veeam One" ISO file in "Addins\SQLScript\" folder. The name of this script is "VeeamOne.sql".

c) You can copy this script to the SQL server and open it using SQL Management Studio. Execute the script to make the new Database compatible with "Veeam One". The results screen with an output of 650 Indicates that this is a script for Veeam One v6.5. The script should result in successful execution.

Figure 1: Run the "Veeam One" script on SQL against pre-created database with the name "VeeamOne".

d) This completes the pre-configuration required for Veeam One Database.

2) The next step is to start with the Veeam One Installation, double-click the file downloaded from Veeam website to start the installation. ( Figure 2).

Figure 2 - Veeam one Install prompt.

3) Click on " Veeam One Server "to start the installation, in my case I was prompted that some required files were missing.(Figure 3). Just when you think that you have to go all around the world looking for these files to install the prerequisites, Veeam has a surprise for you, once you click OK, the Installer will start installing these files by itself.Great Isn't it...

Figure 3 : Veeam One Installation Prerequisites.

4) The next couple of installation prompts are a no brainier, where you just click next to continue.

Figure 4 : Setup prompt.

Figure 5: Accept the License Agreement.

Figure 6: Select the License Mode. Since, I had a full license of Veeam One, I selected " Full Functionality Mode"

Figure 7: Select the Install Type, I have selected Advanced.

Figure 8: The installer installs 2 Components. "Veeam One server" and "Veeam One Web UI".

Figure 9: The Installer does a final System Configuration Check and reports the missing components.

Figure 10: The installer automatically installs the missing components.I wish all the installers were as simple and intelligent as this.

Figure 11: Enter a Domain user name that will be used to run Veeam One.

5) I am selecting the second option to use an existing SQL Server, Click the Browse button and the SQL server should show up. Next, click the Browse button for Database name and the select the database you created in Step 2.

Figure 12: The Installer has detected the External Database that we created in Step 2 and click Next.

6)The next screen shows the Ports that will be used by Veeam One.

Figure 13: Default Ports used by Veeam One.

7) The next screen let's you select which environment you want to monitor using Veeam One. I will be using it for vSphere Environemnt, maybe in later modules I will also use Hyper-V.

Figure 14: Select VMware vCenter Server.

8) In the next screen you will have to enter the credentials for vCenter.

Figure 15: Enter Credentials of vcenter.

9) Summary screen for Installation.

Figure 16: Install Summary screen.

10) Once the install completes, you should see two icons on the desktop.

a) Veeam One Business View

b) Veeam One reporter.

Figure 17: Icons on the Desktop.

11) The last component that needs to be installed is "Veeam One Monitor Client".Its available in the Veeam One Installation Media.It's a very straight forward and requires about 6 mouse clicks.

Figure 18: Select Veeam ONE Monitor Client.

Figure 19: Click next in the Install Screen.

Figure 20: Take all the time in the world to read the License agreement. :-)

Figure 21: Select the Location to install the Client.

Figure 22: If you want the icon on the desktop, keep the checkbox enabled.

Figure 23: Review the final install screen.

Figure 24: Veeam One Monitor client appears on the Desktop.

This concludes the installation of Veeam One for VMware environments.

Note : The log files for Veeam One installation and the product itself is located in the below location. These are extremely helpful in troubleshooting if you run into any issues.

a) Veeam One Setup log files in Windows 2008: C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Setup\Temp

and in 2003: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Veeam\Setup\Temp

b) Veeam One Reporter Server log files are located in 2008: C:\Users\Userid$\AppData\Local\Veeam\Veeam ONE

c) Veeam one Business View - Website information is located in :
C:\Program Files\Veeam\Veeam ONE\Veeam ONE Business View Web\Generated\log.txt

d) To obtain the log files in Veeam One Monitor you select Help => Support Information. This will start the log collection process and zip all the relevant files open a new windows with the log files. ( Figure 27).