Unbelievable granularity with file level views from Backup Capacity Tool

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One of the best things about the recently introduced Free Unitrends Backup Capacity Tool is that it gives you visibility into file level detail in your backup storage environment.  Essentially you get a point in time snapshot of all your files to help calculate backup sizing requirements.  Plus you get incredible granular level file reports across your data center so that you can make realistic estimates of backup sizes, retentions, and more. The Backup Capacity Tool is distributed as a virtual server appliance and is available in both VMware™ and Hyper-V™ formats. Installation is as simple as importing the server appliance files into your hypervisor (ESX/VM Workstation/VM Server for VMware, Hyper-V for Microsoft), setting the network properties for the Backup Capacity Tool virtual machine, adding credentials for the assets to be scanned, and then adding those assets to the Backup Capacity Tool via its web GUI. The Backup Capacity tool connects to most types of storage hardware, as well as general systems of record, to generate a comprehensive, detailed map of your storage environment. It includes services to discover storage configurations, monitor system performance and events, and calculate end-user usage and allocation values. There’s a video that guides you through the installation process on the lower right of this web page. Once you’ve deployed the tool, you can generate both summary and detailed reports.  The example here shows a screen shot of a summary report that gives you a sense of how powerful this tool can be.

This report is useful for telling you what types of files impact your backups.  One of the pie charts shows the breakdown of file type categories discovered on a storage device selected in the Navigation Menu. The other pie chart shows the percentage of duplicate files found on that storage. Below the pie charts is a list of high-level file type categories, showing each one’s total size used and their percentage of the total used space. You can easily drill down to see file access activity as shown in the screen shot here.

This screen report shows file creation activity over time as a graphic chart and as month-by-month tabular data, so you can double-check and see new files that may need to be included or excluded from backup jobs. These are just a couple of examples of what you can do with this free tool.  I’ll be highlighting more in future blogs and responding to any comments or questions you might have about using the tools.