Veeam V10 Data Re-use: Part 3 - Business Intelligence

 Veeam V10 Data Re-use (Business Intelligence)

So, this is a Continuation of Blog post PART 2 of Data Re-use blog series, Part two here addressed Security Analysis with Veeam Re-Use API.

Business intelligence 

What is Business intelligence?

As Per Wikipedia:

According to Forrester Research, business intelligence is "a set of methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information used to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making."

So, I decided to use a tool to determine Filesystem statistics held in backup including sizes and obsolete data that might still linger in backup sets.

For this I used a Java-based tool called JDiskReport :

Here is a short description of the tool as described on their website http://www.jgoodies.com/

 

“ JDiskReport enables you to understand how much space the files and directories consume on your disk drives, and it helps you find obsolete files and folders.”

“The tool analyses your disk drives and collects several statistics which you can view as overview charts and details tables.”

Here is the download to the Tool http://www.jgoodies.com/downloads/jdiskreport/

This tool will require Java , so ensure this is installed on the server you install the tool too first.

Java download can be found here : https://www.java.com/en/download/

Let’s start…

The Use case:  

I wanted to mount Multiple backups at the same time to compare file system differences across them, I mounted the First & the Last of the series of backups for the specific server and then compared oldest against newest.

•     I could then observer Data Size change trends
•     I could observer obsolete data
•     I could observer Stagnant data that should be considered for archiving

Veeam Data Re-Use APIs

So how do we address the data held in backups by Veeam , with V10 Veeam release, Veeam has added Data Re-use API more can be read here:

Post 1  http://www.mritsurgeon.co.za/2020/04/veeam-v10-data-re-use-part-1-data.html

Post 2  http://www.mritsurgeon.co.za/2020/04/veeam-v10-data-re-use-part-2-security.html

Veeam Blog  https://www.veeam.com/blog/v10-data-integration-api.html

Veeam help centre https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/powershell/veeam-data-integration-api.html?ver=100

By automating the mount of Historical backup data and exploring this data with BI tools we can find file system trends in our backup data sets.

So let’s start, I won’t explain too much around the Data Re-use commands as they have been covered in the above links.  

                                                                                                                             

On My backup server I ran the following in PowerShell to publish backup data so that I can then scan data within

This command is a Little different to previous posts as I now address 2 recovery points to use as source backup data for the mount process:

My Script:

#Load the Veeam PowerShell Snapin

Add-PSSnapin VeeamPSSnapin

#Connect to the Backup server

Connect-VBRServer -Server "veeam" -User "Administrator" -Password "****"

#Specify the latest backup Point to be used in Publish

$pointfirst = Get-VBRBackup -Name "Vm test Data" | Get-VBRRestorePoint -Name "windev2001eval" | Sort-Object $_.creationtime -Descending | Select -First 1

#Specify the oldest backup Point to be used in Publish

$pointlast = Get-VBRBackup -Name "Vm test Data" | Get-VBRRestorePoint -Name "windev2001eval" | Sort-Object $_.creationtime -Descending | Select -last 1

#Specify the Credentials for the Filesystem Os being mounted

$creds = Add-VBRCredentials -User "windev2001eval\Administrator" -Password "****"

#Publish (Mount the Backup) Latest to Target server is the backup server

Publish-VBRBackupContent -RestorePoint $pointfirst -TargetServerName "veeam" -TargetServerCredentials $creds

#Publish (Mount the Backup) oldest to Target server is the backup server

Publish-VBRBackupContent -RestorePoint $pointlast -TargetServerName "veeam" -TargetServerCredentials $creds

Now That the Backups Are published, we can now Interrogate the backup Data with JDiskReport

If we look at the FLR directory in my case: C:\VeeamFLR

We can see both newest and oldest backups mounted

JDiskReport

Once JDiskReport tool is Installed we can point it too the FLR directory C:\VeeamFLR

To scan both Backup images and volumes within.

Once opened we can now see visualizations of the Filesystems of both mounted backups

You can view each backup individually and expand the directories to compare specific folders under these Views.

Here are a few examples:

Here an easier view comparing same files Between both images by top 50 filter either Largest, Oldest or newest : Below example of Largest :

File Distribution by sizes

File Distribution By Modification dates, here we can determine consumed backup storage by obsolete data.

Lastly File Distribution of File Types :

In the Options , I can exclude directories in my reporting like Os Directory  :

 

At this point I can Un-mount / Un-publish the backup/s 

$session = Get-VBRPublishedBackupContentSession

Unpublish-VBRBackupContent -Session $session -RunAsync

Hope this was easy enough to follow & assist with Business / Data analysis of what you currently hold within backup.

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Thank you for reading