Categorizing Veeam & NetBackup Errors

The Bocada Team | March 17, 2017

Backup administrators have a growing need for consolidated reporting. IT operations rely on multiple backup products now more than ever before. A common combination is the addition of a virtualization solution like Veeam to an existing data protection environment with something like NetBackup.

Many objectives are met by having multiple backup products in an IT environment including data protection supplier diversification. However, one argument against a heterogeneous backup environment is a lack of consolidated reporting. Different products use different performance terminology and each has its own reporting interface and learning curve.

The solution to this variability in reporting is standardized, cross-platform enterprise reporting offered by the current version of Bocada. Bocada customers monitor backup performance on Veeam and 15 other backup products including NetBackup. Bocada reports standardize error definitions and terminology to ensure backup errors are clear and consistent – regardless of the backup product.

Below is an example of an environment with assets backed up using both NetBackup and Veeam. We ran a backup job in our test lab with NetBackup that resulted in an error indicating that the drive paths are down, as highlighted in the below screenshot:

We ran a similar job with a similar error on Veeam Backup and Replication which indicates the unavailability of the RPC server, as shown below:

Although these errors come from different backup products, they are both related to the way backups are configured. Through years of development Bocada is able to categorize these errors as similar and can report them in a standard interface side-by-side so that a backup admin can see both of them in a single interface. There are more than a thousand NetBackup error codes listed in their status codes reference guide, and similar large number for Veeam. How do backup administrators manage the complexity of getting information in different formats, through different interfaces with different terminology? Bocada is the answer.

Bocada allows administrators to categorize these errors into standardized error sets and a single-pane, enterprise reporting interface. With Bocada reporting both the above two errors will be categorized as ‘Backup Configuration Error’ and shown effectively side-by-side as you can see below:

Error standardization has two main benefits. First, it allows logical groupings of the same or similar errors from different backup products. While reporting to management, it is simple to list out error count per category across Veeam and NetBackup along with and other products. Second, it consolidates configuration actions for scenarios where multiple error codes require similar actions for resolution.

For example, suppose four low-impact errors are identified for a given backup product and a decision is made to ignore them because the backups are recoverable despite these errors. A custom error category can be created containing the errors and set to display ‘Always Green’ in the Error Set Definitions. In essence these errors would be ignored in the reporting.

Bocada provides reporting to over 1,300 global enterprises. If your organization is looking to improve backup performance and visibility you can reach Bocada at +1-425-898-2400, email sales@bocada.com or fill out the contact form on our website.