OpsCenter Analytics – Deeper Dive of OpsCenter Options

Description This lab will take you deeper into the functionality available with OpsCenter Analytics – the paid version of OpsCenter. With it, you can report further back in time, as well as create custom reports using Custom Tabular and SQL reporting.

This lab assumes you are familiar with NetBackup and have a basic understanding of backups and what a typical backup admin would manage, report and provide alerts on a NetBackup solution, on a weekly basis.

NOTE: The VM’s in use for this lab have been forced to start on September 12, 2012 to simulate live data from our demonstration database.

At the end of this lab, you should be able to

Understand how OpsCenter Analytics can assist you in your NetBackup environment – beyond the “free” version

Have a deeper understanding of OpsCenter Analytics custom report capability including an understanding of how to create custom reports from scratch to suit your needs

Understand the concept of Groups (Views) and how to create them manually as well as adding them in an automated fashion

Know how Legal Search and Hold can benefit you in your NetBackup environment

Understand Use Cases and how to use Custom Reporting, Groups and other OCA functions to solve them

Notes This lab is NOT self paced however if you are an experienced OC customer you are welcome to go through it without waiting for the instructor

This lab uses a PPT deck to set up use cases and then we move to the lab to solve the use cases

Some information has been pre-seeded into the database

You are welcome to take this lab guide with you to try this out in your environment

After completing the tasks in this lab, feel free to “play” with other options to familiarize yourself with the OpsCenter Analyitcs options

Be sure to ask your instructor any questions you may have. There are also OpsCenter experts in the room available if you have questions. Raise your hand

Thank you for coming to our lab session

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Lab Layout

Lab System Overview

Server

Server Username Password Operating System

visionholmaster Administrator Vision2013 Windows

Starting up the Virtual Machines

The Virtual Machine should be running when you enter the lab. If not, follow the instructions on the screen to boot the VM. The OpsCenter Machine is a single, standalone VM with a demo DB. It does not have an active connection to any Master Server.

The Windows login is Administrator with a password of Vision2013 (case sensitive)

Note: The lab machine has been forced to start up on September 12, 2012 to give the best reporting options. Also, the performance on this VM is quite poor compared to performance on a physical machine. Some reports will take 30 – 40 seconds to run on the VM whereas they would take 1 – 2 seconds on a physical machine.

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Lab Agenda

Activity 1 – Views

Views

Excercise 1 – Create a simple View using OpsCenter

Excercise 2 – Run a report against the Group that was created

5 minutes

Exercise 2 – Using ViewBuilder

View Builder overview

Excercise 3 – Use View Builder to manually add some objects into a View

Excercise 4 – Import a View using import tools

Excercise 5 – Run a simple report on the View we have created

15 minutes

Activity 3 – View Based Access Control (VBAC)

Using VBAC to solve user limiting requirements

Excercise 6 – Create a User and assign a View that has been created

Excercise 7 – Log in as user and show how options are limited

10 minutes

Activity 4 – Custom Reporting

Using VBAC to solve user limiting requirements

Excercise 8 – Create a custom tabular report that solves a Use Case

Excercise 9 – Create a second custom tabular report that solves a Use Case

15 minutes

Activity 5 – Using Custom SQL

How Custom SQL can solve problems and create reports

Excercise 10 – Copy and paste custom SQL code from desktop to solve Use Case

5 minutes

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Activity 1 – Basic Views Business level reporting is one of the key values of OpsCenter Analytics. Being able to move from client, policy, master and media server-centric reporting to one where you look at your data protection environment from a business context is done through a concept called “Views”.

Note: In future versions of OpsCenter, Views will be renamed to Groups.

Views are basically a hierarchical grouping of hosts, policies or master servers (objects) that can be used when running reports. You can create as many views as you need, and a client, policy, or master server can appear in as many views as you want. Once you understand how Views work, you will be amazed at how versatile they can be in reporting on your environment.

An example of a View would be a customer that has data centers (or remote sites) all over the world, but wants to be able to see what is going on at each “at a glance”. Some of the data centers have a single master, some have multiple masters. Sometimes the admin wants to pull the reports all at once, or at times may just be interested in the Masters in one data center. A View can be created to accommodate this.

This activity will familiarize you with how to create simple Views, and how to use them when running reports.

Lab Exercise 1

Create a simple View using the OpsCenter interface 3 minutes

There are two ways to create a View – first is using the OpsCenter interface. The second is using View Builder. This Exercise will use the OpsCenter interface. We will use the View Builder later in the next Activity.

To add a View, perform the following steps from the OpsCenter GUI:

1. Click on Settings > Views

2.

3. Click on Add

4. Type Windows Clients in the Name field leaving the View Type as Client and click OK

5. Now we need to Populate the View

6. Put a check mark next to the Windows Clients View and click on Manage Nodes and Objects

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7. Click on the “Objects not in selected View” tab

8. You will now see all of the Objects that can be added to the View

9. Choose any 10 – 15 of the servers listed by placing a check box next to them

10. Click the Add to Node buotton

a. Note: This step is often missed when customers are new to Views

11. Click Finish in the bottom right hand corner

This View is now populated and ready for use.

Note: Many large customers have created hundreds of Views

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Lab Exercise 2

Run a Report against the Group that was just created 2 minutes

Part of the power of the View is the ability to focus a report on just a handful of servers/client/objects. This exercise will use the Advanced Success Rate Report and focus it on the View that we created in Exercise 1 which will limit the data to just the servers that you selected above.

1. Click on the Reports tab at the top of the screen 2. Click on the + sign before each of the headings and expand the following report templates

a. Backup Reports > Status & Succes Rate Reports > Success Rate Reports 3. Click on the Advanced Success Rate report (not the check box – click on the hyperlink) 4. Click Edit Report

5. Leave the Time Frame at default 6. Under Filters > View change Select View Name to the Windows Clients view you just created

a. You will see the clients themselves populate under the view b. Note that you can exclude a Client from the report if you desire by removing the check box

7. Click Run Report at the bottom of the screen

This has been a very simple exercise in creating a View and then reporting on it. Easy right? Think of how you could use this in your environment.

Now lets look at how this works using the more powerful View Builder.

Activity 2 – Using the ViewBuilder

The ViewBuilder is a bolt on product to OpsCenter that is installed separately. It is more powerful than the View creation in OpsCenter and allows more flexibility when creating Groups/Views. This Activity will walk you through some of the options when using ViewBuilder.

First – log into the View Builder by clicking on the Icon on your desktop and log in with the same user and password as you did for OpsCenter – admin/password

Once you are logged in, we will begin exercise 3.

Lab Exercise 3

Use ViewBuilder to manually add some objects into a Group 5 minutes

Let’s assume for the purposed of this Excercise that we are a service provider that backs up all servers for a handful of hotels in Las Vegas. Let’s see how we can create a view called Las Vegas, where we will assign Clients

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to each of the hotels we manage so that we can quickly see how things are going at each of the properties. Again – with our demo database you may need to use your imagination a bit but let’s give it a try.

1. Click on Actions > Create View at the top left corner 2. Enter Las Vegas for the View Name 3. Leave View Type as Client and don’t worry about a Description 4. Click OK 5. Now, right click on the blue Las Vegas entry on the left pane 6. Click Create Object 7. Enter FLAMINGO_HOTEL as Object name, leave the Object Type as Generic and click OK 8. Right click again on the Las Vegas entry on the left pane again. 9. Click Create Object 10. Enter MGM_HOTEL as Object name and hit OK 11. Repeat steps 8-11 to create a LUXOR_HOTEL category

So we have created the Views and the Levels – now we need to populate them with Objects

12. Click on the Unassigned Objects tab on the right side 13. Click on the Load Unassigned View button to load the Clients so we can choose them

Obviously if you were creating this for yourself you would know which clients to add, in this case just highlight 10 – 20 and then drag them under one of the HOTELs you created on the left (use the Control or Shift keys to select multiple objects)

NOTE: You will notice that as you drag them they are no longer “unassigned” so they disappear from the list.

This has demonstrated how easy it is to create groups of systems, areas, whatever you want to group using View Builder. Now that the View has been created, you would be able to use it in OCA as a method to pull reports on just those Clients.

Lab Exercise 4

Import a View using the View Builder import tools 5 minutes

Creating views by hand with the View Builder was quick and easy, but you can see how this process can be slow when you have to deal with thousands of objects (or Clients), especially if you already know how each host is to be categorized because you have a CMDB that keeps this information in a central place.

Let’s see how View Builder can Import a view based on a CSV file.

1. Click on Actions > Import > Import Views at the top left of the GUI 2. Browse to C:\SCRIPTS 3. Click on import.csv

Two new Views have been created – Production Server and Test Server

4. Under Views, click the down arrow 5. Double click on the Views to see the Objects listed under each 6. To see the format of the .CSV file, navigate to C:\TEMP and open the IMPORT.CSV with wordpad

So as long as we have good information in the .CSV file, the View Builder can use this information to import and create custom Views. Again, this will require some preparation from the admins.

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Now lets load the other View that is in the C:\TEMP directory which is a .XML file. Use the steps above to do so.

Once you have imported the Geography.XML file, lets take a look at what it has done for us.

1. Click Reload All Data at the top left of the GUI a. This loads the data for the Views

2. Under Views, drop down to Geography 3. Click the + sign next to each Region to see the machines and the format of the View.

In this example, we have systems in different Geo’s and under each Geo we have cities that have systems we are monitoring. By using the Import tool we are able to easily bring that data into OpsCenter so we can report on it.

Lets use the Views we have created to do some reports.

Lab Exercise 5

Run a simple report on the View we have created 5 minutes

Now that we have some Views created, lets run a simple yet powerful report on them to see how the View limits the data and what our options are within each View.

1. Go back to the OpsCenter interface a. If you closed it, login is admin/password

2. Click on the Reports tab at the top of the screen 3. Click on the + sign before each of the headings and expand the following report templates

a. Backup Reports > Status & Succes Rate Reports > Success Rate Reports 4. Single click on the Advanced Success Rate hyperlink

What you see is data from the last two weeks – but we haven’t limited it to the View yet. Due to the fact that we have an 8GB database on a VM, this takes a while to show the report – we are going to fix that by limiting the report parameters before we click on anything. This is a good habit to get into as your OpsCenter database grows. So lets edit the report and limit it based on a View.

5. Click Reports tab at the top again 6. Instead of clicking on the Advanced Success Rate hyperlink, put a check in the box to the far left of the

screen 7. Click Edit Report 8. Change Relative TimeFrame to Previous 1 Months 9. Under View – Choose the Geography View we created 10. Click Run Report

The report is much faster even though we went back a month (instead of the default two weeks). This is because we limited the information to a handful of machines in the View.

We will use this View more in the Custom Reports Activity later on.

Activity 3 – View Based Access Control (VBAC)

In complex environments there is usually the need to give an Operator or Admin restore or reporting capability over a group of servers rather than the entire NetBackup environment. This can be accomplished using Views

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within OpsCenter and then tying that View to a User that has been created using OpsCenter. This Activity will walk you through this process and then show you how this can be used to give an Operator restore capability for a set of machines.

Lab Exercise 6

Create a User and assign a View that has been created 5 minutes

Use Case – You have an Operations person that you want to be able to restore only a handful of servers – for example ONLY a handful of Finance Clients. This user also needs to be able to pull reports for these servers but not any other server in the environment. We will use the “Las Vegas” View we created earlier rather than creating a new one for this Exercise.

1. Click Settings > Users 2. Click Add 3. Leave User Creation Type as New User 4. Type James into the User Name box 5. Give it a password

a. Note the password requirements below the Password box. You should write down the password you just created on the HOL Guide

6. Change User Role to Operator a. The “Operator” Role lets the user pull reports, perform restores and do other minor tasks

associated with the View however does not allow them to make global changes. The other Roles provide different options which are explained in the OpsCenter User Guide.

7. This opens up the Available Views and Granted Views boxes. 8. Choose Las Vegas on the left and click on the -> to move it to the right side under Granted Views 9. Click Save and Close

This has granted the User you created access to the View you created. Now lets test it…

10. In the upper right hand corner choose Logout. 11. Type James in the box (it is case sensitive). 12. Type in the password you created and click Logon

a. You will be prompted to change the password. This assumes that an OpsCenter admin is creating users and that the user is required to change their password at their first login

13. After changing the password, log in with the new one you created 14. You will notice that the only access you have are the systems that were added to the Las Vegas View

Based on this, you could run reports and do restores – but only on these systems as you will see in the next exercise. We will show that in the next Exercise.

Lab Exercise 7

Log in as the new user and run a report 3 minutes

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While logged into the OC Master as the user you created, let’s take a look at the Advanced Success Rate report again:

1. Click on the Reports tab at the top of the screen 2. Click on the + sign before each of the headings and expand the following report templates

a. Backup Reports > Status & Success Rate Reports > Success Rate Reports 3. Click on the Advanced Success Rate report (not the check box – click on the hyperlink) 4. Click Edit Report 5. Choose any time frame you like 6. Notice that View says All My Views

a. If you only have access to one View – it is the only one you can use b. If you had access to multiple Views, you could choose them as needed for different reporting

options 7. Click Run Report at the bottom of the screen

The only information you are able to pull is based on the Clients that you added to the View.

You can see how Views and View Based Access Control can make it easier to report on (and do minor management tasks) in a large production environment.

Keep in mind that OpsCenter is separate from NetBackup so if you choose to use NBAC (NetBackup Access Control) you would still need to get into OpsCenter and set up users.

Activity 4 – Custom Reporting One of the most powerful features of OpsCenter Analytics is the ability to build custom “Tabular Reports”. This method of reporting allows nearly complete customizable control of a report, however it can be difficult to understand until you have done a few of them and understand the options. It is the second most powerful report generator besides custom SQL, but custom SQL is hard to understand unless you have a dedicated SQL DBA who can pull the reports and maintain the code.

You start with an “empty” report and add Columns that report on various bits of data. The filtering levels can get very granular with the reporting. This is both good and bad as adding too much data to the report without the proper safeguards (like reducing the amount of time for the report) can create a report that either takes a very long time to run, or will time out.

We will be using Use Cases for these reports.

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Lab Exercise 8

Create a Custom Tabular report that solves a Use Case 5 minutes

Using custom reporting can help you meet reporting goals, however there is a bit of a learning curve to figure out how to do everything you want to do. These excercises should help you in understanding some of the facets to custom reporting. Let’s take a look at a use case and then solve it. Use Case: You have a Client naming scheme that includes “VM” in the name for all your Virtual clients. You want to pull a report that only shows those Clients and include information about the backups that shows the following:

Client name

Only Full backups

When the job ended

How much data was backed up

Whether or not the backup was successful Build a report that limits the report to only include this information.

To build a custom report for this Use Case perform the following steps:

1. Click on the Report tab 2. Click on the Create New Report button towards the top of the screen 3. Click on the button next to Create a Custom Report and click Next 4. Under Report View Type change to Tabular and click Next 5. Change the Relative TimeFrame to the Previous 1 Month 6. Under Filters set the following options:

a. Client i. Column = Client Name

ii. Operator = Contains iii. Value = %vm% (type this in – the % is the SQL wildcard)

7. Under Filters set the following options a. Schedule

i. Schedule/Level Type = Full 8. Click Next

Now we need to choose the columns we want to see

9. Choose the following items (put a check box next to them – you may have to scroll down for some but these are listed in order they show up)

a. Job End Time b. Job Size c. Job Status (Complete and Partial Only) d. Client Name (near the bottom)

10. Click Add 11. Put a check next to Client Name, then use the up arrow on the right side to move it to the top. This

determines the order the columns are shown a. Note: Remove the check box once you have it at the top

12. Change Sort Order next to Client Name to Ascending 13. Below the Columns on the left, put a check box in the Display unique rows in the report box 14. Click Next to run this report

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What we see is the report that limits it to the values we have chosen. One thing we see is a lot of “job size” as 0 (zero) which is due to our database. Just for fun, lets remove those.

15. Click Back twice 16. Under Filters select the following options

a. Job i. Column = Job Size

ii. Operator = != (this is the equivalent of “not equal to”) iii. Value = 0 in both From and To fields

17. Click Next twice to run the report again with these new modifications.

That should have removed the results that didn’t back up any data. Depending on your naming scheme this type of wildcard report could be very valuable. For example – obtaining information about all of your Finance Clients if you use “FIN” in the naming scheme. Most customers that we have talked to use some sort of a naming scheme – OpsCenter and Custom reporting can make pulling reports on these systems easy!

Lab Exercise 9

Create a second Custom Tabular report that solves a Use Case 5 minutes

Now lets try another Use Case for more Custom reporting and apply it to the Geography View we imported earlier.

Use Case: In this scenario you have been asked by your Compliance Office to pull a report from all of your Geographies that show if all clients are getting backed up and if not, how long has it been since the worst offenders have been protected. This report makes use of the Custom report template “Ranking”.

1. Click on the Report tab 2. Click on the Create New Report button towards the top of the screen 3. Click on the button next to Create a Custom Report and click Next 4. Under Report View Type change to Ranking and click Next 5. Leave the Relative Time Frame at 2 weeks

a. In your environment you may want to go back further if needed 6. Under Filters set the following options:

a. View i. Select the Geography View

b. Client i. Column = Client Is Active

ii. Operator = leave at default iii. Value = Yes

c. Job i. Job Type = Backup

ii. Click ADD at then end of the row to add another Filter under Job iii. Job Status = Successful and Partially Successful (hold down your CNTL key to select

both) 7. Click Next 8. Change Report On field to Client Name (scroll down, it is about ¾ of the way to the bottom) 9. Leave the Display at 10 but change the sort order to Descending 10. Change Report Data to Elapsed Time Since Last Job (about ¼ of the way from the top)

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11. Set the Count field to Minimum 12. Set Time Duration to Hours 13. Click Next

So this is going out and pulling information about any system that hasn’t backed up in the past two weeks and displaying them. As we look at the results we can see there are a few systems that haven’t backed up within the time specified.

This type of a report is good for SLA reporting but as you can see takes some knowledge of what the filters do to make it work.

Activity 5 – Using Custom SQL OpsCenter Analytics offers the ability to use custom SQL scripting to pull reports. This is a very advanced process and requires the customer to understand the SQL database structure, command calls and know how to make use of the schema that we publish. It requires a SQL DBA and any reports that you create are not supported by Symantec. If a report requires an update, you cannot call support and ask them to update it for you. Therefore only customers who have a SQL DBA should attempt custom SQL reporting.

Again we will use a Use Case and build a custom SQL query to solve the problem. In this case, the SQL code will be in a .TXT file and will simply require copy/paste. But you will be able to see the power of SQL reporting.

Lab Exercise 10

Use a SQL query to solve a Use Case 5 minutes

A lot of large customers are not sure what each Client is backing up. A very easy SQL query can show the information from the Policies that shows what each Policy/Client is set to back up. This does not show what actually backed up – it just shows what is configured to back up.

1. Click on Reports 2. Click on Create New Report 3. Select Run SQL Query 4. Click Next 5. On your desktop, locate a file named CUSTOM_SQL_QUERY.TXT and open it with Notepad by double

clicking on it 6. Highlight the text in the document and copy it 7. Switch back to OpsCenter and paste the information into the Enter SQL Query box (large white box) 8. Click Next

What you will see is a report that shows what each Policy is slated to back up.

This is a very basic SQL report but if you have a SQL DBA who enjoys pulling reports from a SQL database, we can offer the schema to help them do so. You must be an OpsCenter Analytics customer to use this feature.

Final Thoughts:

OpsCenter and OpsCenter Analytics can provide in depth reporting for a NetBackup customer and in many cases are included in your licensing agreement at no additional charge.

Thank you for attending!