DLO - Generate useful reports.

[CLakey]

Hi,

      Running 11d with around 30 DLO clients spread over about 13 remote sites.

We need a useful report to show the status of the backups?
 - Currently DLO seems to report on a failed backup for each single file which has issues backing up.
 - Currently DLO seems to report on a successful backup for each single file which has succesfully backed up.

There is an option to set warnings, 7 days, 14 days 28 days etc, but as above this will generate a single warning for each file which has not backed up in this period etc.

What I would like (I think) is a daily 'digest' report, showing how many files, and the size of this data that has successfully backed up and any data which is 'unprotected' (not successfully backed up) and to itemise these files, per user.

I would have thought that this would be a report that most DLO admins would be interested in reviewing?

Perhaps it is already present in the system, however I can't find anything like it??

Thoughts??
Help appreciated.

Cheers.

[Simoon]

As DLO is today, the reporting you see is the reporting you get. I will forward your comments to PM as a product request. DLO utilizes a microsoft jet database which can be accessed with tools like crystal reports for custom reporting.

Thanks

[NPD]

The DLO reporting feature sticks and is of no use.  Most other backup products have the ability to generate custom reports out of the box.

[ZeroCool2x]

I have approx. 200 DLO clients covering 8 remote sites. Each remote site has one system which is running BESR and we are backing up our DLO clients to the local system running BESR. The system running BESR then backs up it's self and the data from the DLO clients to a removable USB drive. The drive is large enough to hold 7 days of backups and once a week the drive is sent off site and a new USB disk is swapped in and we have 7 USB drives. So basicly we have the ability to go back 7 weeks using this system and it has worked pretty well.

The only major issue we have is the reporting piece of DLO. What's available is hard to parse through and get what we want. I guess we could purchase Crystal Reports, but as we are already paying for DLO, BESR and Backup Exec my question is why should we have to. Several other products have very good reporting capabilities built-in and we have and are considering going to another product, but it would be nice to stay with our current product as this is what we are currently using and are most familiar with.

It would be nice if Symantec would add some better reporting to this product line and maybe even some canned reports as well, but an even bigger issue needs to be fixed before this. Backup Exec has always reported a backup job as failed wether it was do to one file or several. Other products use a system such as Successful, Incomplete or Failed. It would be nice if Symantec could change the BackupExec product line so that when a backup runs, but is unable to backup one or more files because the file was opened, locked or whatever that it would identify the job as Succesful, but Incomplete. Such as:

10/12/2008    Backup Job 1         FULL                 Successfull, Incomplete

10/13/2008    Backup Job 2         FULL                 Sucessfull, Complete

10/14/2008    Backup Job 3         Incremential       Failed

It would be nice to be able to identify a job right away as really failing, such as a parity error or a bad tape or disk read error or a write error. Currently so many Jobs so as failed whne in fact the job completed and backed up every thing except for one excel sheet that was locked. By default we try to exclude all of the files that we now we will never need for a restore such as .TMP, .DMP, temporary files, etc. but sometimes we will have a spreadsheet or a word document fail to backup because it was open or locked and the Agent was not able to backup the file. The problem is that the backup reports are mailed out to managements and we are always getting questions like, "Why are there so many failures?" and when we explain that the job really ran, but we were unable to process one file we always get the same reply, "Why does the job say failed then?".

The status and reporting pieces are important parts of the backup puzzle and these changes would help us  as a customer. We would even consider paying additional maint fee's for the ability to request addon's similar to how Microsoft supplies their Select customers with Addon's.

[TK-Mass]

I have relatively modest rqmnts compared to many of those posting:  just 1 location and 25 clients, but, nevertheless, I agree that the reporting in DLO is not helpful.  I had anticipated that v12.5 would have some reporting additions / improvements compared to 11d, but I didn't see what I was hoping for.  Namely, as suggested by others, space used by computer/user, and some better indication of pct. coverage. 

Maybe something like this:

User    Machine   Last BU   BU Status   Network space used    Laptop space used    Profile/Custom settings

Each client already shows a one-liner summary of space used on the status screen, so it would seem to be an easy rpt to pull together. 

I do, by the way, appreciate the existing view that has the indication of Profile or Customized settings by laptop - that might be helpful in managing users (I allow my users to override settings, but I want to make sure they don't simply put backups into "Manual Only" and then never do them.)

Thanks,

Tom