If you like what you see you can download Veeam Reporter Free edition here >>
http://www.veeam.com/reporter-free-promo/virtualisedreality.com
This link will register against me for the Veeam Blogger Contest for which Veeam are offering charity donations via Charity Choice. As this is an American based site I will ask my readers to recommend a charity if I am lucky enough to win one of the prizes.
Veeam have today launched the free version of their reporter product. If you are not familier with Veeam Reportor, here’s a description in Veeam’s own words.
Veeam Reporter™ discovers, documents and analyzes your entire virtual infrastructure. It maintains a complete history of all objects, settings and changes. And it trends performance and utilization. So you can really understand your virtual infrastructure—past, present and future.
A full comparison between the free version and full version can be found here >> http://www.veeam.com/veeam_reporter_free_edition_wn.pdf as you would expect the free version is some what limited and some of the most useful features are heavily limited or not available such as change tracking is limited to 24 hours, there is no powershell access and no capacity planning. But it’s free!!! The good news is that if you find you like it so much that you would like to purchase the full version, it is easily upgraded by a simple license key, no re-installation needed.
I was lucky enough to have access to an early release as I am taking part in Veeam’s totally transparent bloggers contest. >> http://www.veeam.com/blog/christmas-in-august-veeamrsquos-totally-transparent-blogger-contest.html
The installation is very simple, you probably want to do the initial installation on a server or workstation, as this will be where the web interface will run from. You will need .net framework 3.5.1 and the IIS role installed, ensure that you also have the windows authentication module installed under IIS. Veeam Reporter uses a SQL backend to store it’s data, you can either use an existing SQL server or SQL Express, note if you choose SQL Express this will be downloaded during the installation process, with my extremly slow home broadband this did take me over 1 hour!
Once you have ran through the installation you are able to access the reporter web interface via a shortcut installed in the Veeam folder on the start menu.
Configuration is accessed through a hyperlink in the top right corner
You will want to create a new collection job, this will let Reporter know where to collect the information from
Once you have created the collection job you will see an entry as follows
(Note my job has failed above as my home lab is currently turned off)
As well as running the job on a schedule you are also able to manually start a collection using the Start button when highlighting your collection job.
Once you have configured your collection job and have ran an initial collection you are able to access the workspace and start running reports.
On the left hand side you are able to choose the components you wish to report on, whilst on the right you are able to choose the report and select the objects to include.
Note the download link to the Veeam Report Viewer, you will require this to process some of the report objects that don’t display on screen such as the Visio and Excel reports.
Once you have selected your report and clicked the generate report button, a .vmr file will be downloaded that Veeam Viewer can process.
Here are some examples of the Visio reports
and an exmaple of the Infrastructure Report, there is 124 pages of information for my small home lab!!!
https://virtualisedreality.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/inventory-report-pdf_8-17-2010.pdf
For a free product it is amazing the amount of information you can get out of it, it will be especially useful during a new installation for documentation etc. If you are using VMware Essentials or Essentials + you may wish to consider Veeam Essentials as not only does this include Reporter, but monitor and backup as well.
If you like what you see you can download Veeam Reporter Free edition here >>
http://www.veeam.com/reporter-free-promo/virtualisedreality.com
This link will register against me for the Veeam Blogger Contest for which Veeam are offering charity donations via Charity Choice. As this is an American based site I will ask my readers to recommend a charity if I am lucky enough to win one of the prizes.
Virtualised Reality 