cancel
Showing results forΒ 
Search instead forΒ 
Did you mean:Β 

Monitoring Symantec System Recovery Through Automation

JustN
Level 4

Good Afternoon-

I love the SSR product (500+ active deployments), but unfortunaltey, management options for large-to-enterprise installations just do not exist. And yes, I am aware Symantec has an Altiris-based Management Solution, however, in my environment, installing an agent on remote PC's is simply not an option (due in part to software compatibility and support restrictions).

That said, I have come to the conclusion that I will have to write a custom reporting module to get the data I need and so far I have made some significant progress, but I still have a few roadblocks.

My goal is to create a roll-up reporting system -- my SSR backup server at each site will run a small custom application to poll each SSR instance at the site, grab a handful of information about the backups and push the data to a central SQL database. From this SQL database, I will write a custom reports/dashboards/etc... to be able to have an enterprise view of the backup status.

As I said earlier, I have made some progress -- I am gathering /some/ data, as shown in the examples below and the data is reporting up to the SQL database as designed.

My troubles come with getting /detailed/ information from SSR... Let's look at some examples:

----------------- Example #1

My first attempt at this was to start at the image level... Get a list of JOBS from SSR and (hopefully) find the last time the job ran and the status.

This example returns a LOT of good information, however, I cannot seem to find a last image time or last image result. As you can see, I have tried to use the "Next Backup Expected" and "Last Backup Expected" options and the output of those objects makes no sense (in my environment, they both return the same value of 3:00:00 AM, which is not specified as a backup time and does not match what the GUI says the Next/Last Backup times are).

I would probably PREFER to use this method in my application.

Call oBESRApp.Connect(sComputerName)

For Each oImageJob In oBESRApp.ImageJobs

 If oImageJob.Enabled Then

  Console.WriteLine("Backup Job ID: " & vbTab & oImageJob.ID)
  Console.WriteLine("Backup Job Display Name: " & vbTab & oImageJob.DisplayName)
  Console.WriteLine("Type: " & vbTab & oImageJob.Type)
  Console.WriteLine("Description: " & vbTab & oImageJob.Description)
  Console.WriteLine("Next Backup: " & vbTab & oImageJob.NextExpectedBackup)
  Console.WriteLine("Last Backup: " & vbTab & oImageJob.LastExpectedBackup)

  For Each oVolume In oImageJob.Volumes

   Console.WriteLine("Volumes: " & vbTab & oVolume)

  Next

 End If

Next

----------------- Example #2

Since I have not been able to get the data I was hoping to find, I figured I would try from the volume level... Use the API to get a list of ALL volumes on the SSR instance and get the LastImage.TimeStamp for each. This works, but creates a few technical challenges:

- In /some/ cases, I need to be able to exclude drives from reporting based on the SSR instance -- an example here would be, on my SSR backup server, I would not want to report the image status of my iSCSI SAN attached as D: (because I am not backing it up using SSR), but I would want other D: drives, on other SSR instances to report

- This method forces me to use an On Error statement (which I hate to have to do), because SSR will not have a Last Image Time Stamp for a drive it does not have an image for. This must be trapped, or a Null Exception is returned.

Call oBESRApp.Connect(sComputerName)

For Each oVolume In oBESRApp.Volumes(False)

 If (oVolume.Valid) Then

                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "Mount Point: " & vbTab & oVolume.MountPoint)
                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "Mounted: " & vbTab & oVolume.Mounted)
                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "Type: " & vbTab & vbTab & oVolume.Type)
                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "File System: " & vbTab & oVolume.FileSystem)
                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "Display Name: " & vbTab & oVolume.DisplayName)
                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "Boot Volume: " & vbTab & oVolume.Active)
                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "System Volume: " & vbTab & oVolume.System)
                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "Machine: " & vbTab & oVolume.Machine)
                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "Label: " & vbTab & vbTab & oVolume.Label)
                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "Hidden: " & vbTab & oVolume.Hidden)

                    sVolumeLastImage = "10/10/10 10:10:10 AM"

                    On Error Resume Next
                    sVolumeLastImage = oVolume.LastImage.TimeStamp

                    Console.WriteLine(vbTab & "Last Image: " & vbTab & sVolumeLastImage)

         End If

Next

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My preference would be to find a way to make example #1 work... Hoping this makes sense to someone?

Thanks, J

5 REPLIES 5

Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

Wouldn't it be easier to parse the SSR Logfile to find out whether the backup was successfull or not ?

JustN
Level 4

I suppose that running through the SSR Logfile would be an option, however, I don't feel like that gives me the "right now" status I am looking for. If I query SSR on a timed interval (every hour or so) and push that data into my database, it gives me an instant view of the protection status for a particular volume (at least, that's what I am hoping for).

Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

Actually all thats written in the logs is accessible through the API, so from my point of view you achive the same results by querying the logfile regularly.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

It might be worth mentioning that we are releasing a new 'Monitor Tool' with SSR 2013 which will be available in October.

This is a free tool that just does basic monitoring of your BESR/SSR client machines. It will give you a quick snapshot of the current status of each machine.

The only drawback is that it is designed for small-medium sized environments (up to 100 machines).

mustard_man
Level 4

Go for a Altris solution for deployment reports .. Management solution is  is freeand a great tool , by Symantec