Veeam Business View Released, Veeam Reporter Enterprise Updated

Veeam Software recently made available a new add-on tool that works with other Veeam products to group, view and manage virtual machines based on criteria such as business unit, department, location, server purpose, or service level agreement. This alternate view of the VMware infrastructure supports chargeback and helps control “VM sprawl” by linking every virtual machine to a business service. At the same time, Veeam has updated its Reporter Enterprise product to enhance several reports and to integrate the new Business View capability.

Veeam Business View automates the use of VMware’s native custom attributes to categorize VMs. Business View also allows editing the attributes manually for one or multiple VMs at a time, or automatically based on pre-defined rules. For example, VMware administrators can define an automated rule such as “if a VM has retail in its name, add it to the Retail Banking category.”

Business View is integrated with Veeam Reporter Enterprise, the Veeam nworks Management Pack and the nworks Smart Plug-in. In the near future, it will also be integrated with Veeam Monitor and Veeam Backup & Replication. Business View is available at no extra charge for all current Veeam customers on maintenance.

Key benefits of Business View include:

• Manage VMs from a business perspective – Group, view and manage virtual machines based on business criteria.
• Prioritize resource allocation and utilization – Business View’s unique dashboard view allows administrators to see at a glance the number of VMs, vCPUs, amount of memory and storage used by each business unit, department, and server type.
• Control VM sprawl – Business View helps control VM sprawl by categorizing virtual machines. Unassigned VMs and the resources they consume can be immediately seen on the web-based dashboard.
• Define a chargeback model – Together with Veeam Monitor and Veeam Reporter Enterprise, Business View provides the flexibility to define a customized chargeback model. VM group information can be exported to a Microsoft Excel document for reporting or integration with other chargeback, inventory, or billing systems.
• Integrate with existing VM categorization process – Customers already using custom attributes to group VMs by business unit, department, purpose, or SLA can automate and extend what they already have – no need to recreate everything from scratch.
• Open architecture – Because Business View integrates with VMware vCenter data, customers can leverage the advantages of Veeam Business View with the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client and other third-party products. To reduce complexity, Veeam Business View comes with a built-in web service that allows any application to quickly query a specific category’s content directly from the Business View server, without putting any extra load on the vCenter server.

Veeam Business View is available immediately at no charge to all Veeam customers on maintenance.