Preview: Introducing Reporting Capabilities for Azure Site Recovery

 As a Backup and Disaster Recovery Admin, one of your key roles is to obtain insights on data that spans a long time. Similar to Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery provides a reporting solution that uses Azure Monitor logs and Azure workbooks. These resources will help you get rich insights on your estate protected with Site Recovery.  

Reporting for azure site recovery will help meet requirements such as: 

• Troubleshooting
• Auditing of failover and replication
• Identifying key trends at different levels of granularity 

   

Reporting Scenarios 

• Site recovery reports are available to provide historical information on Site Recovery Jobs and, Site Recovery Replicated Items  
• Site Recovery reports are supported for Azure VM replication to Azure, Hyper-V replication to Azure, VMWare replication to Azure – Classic & Modernized. You can find them as filterable options under Replication Scenario: Azure/ Hybrid.   

Pre-requisites for Reports  

  1. Create a Log Analytics workspace or use an existing one  

Set up one or more Log Analytics workspaces to store your reporting data. The location and subscription where this Log Analytics workspace can be created is independent of the location and subscription where your vaults exist. To set up a Log Analytics workspace, see Create a Log Analytics workspace in the Azure portal.   

The data in a Log Analytics workspace is kept for 30 days by default. If you want to see data for a longer time span, change the retention period of the Log Analytics workspace. To change the retention period, see Configure data retention and archive policies in Azure Monitor Logs.  

  2. Configure diagnostics settings for your vaults  

Azure Resource Manager resources, such as Recovery Services vaults, record information about site recovery jobs and replicated items as diagnostics data. To configure diagnostics settings for your vaults, follow these steps:  

1. Go to Azure Portal -> Recovery Services Vault of concern -> Monitoring blade -> Diagnostic Settings  
2. Specify the target for the Recovery Services Vault's diagnostic data. To learn more about using diagnostic events, see Use diagnostics settings for Recovery Services vaults.  
3. Select Azure Site Recovery Jobs and Azure Site Recovery Replicated Item Details tables to populate the site recovery reports.  

View reports in Business Continuity Center  

After you have configured your vault to send data to Log Analytics workspace, you can view your reports by going to the Business Continuity Center -> Monitoring+Reporting blade -> Reports. Under the Azure Site Recovery tab, you will see the following reports.   

Once you click on your report of interest it will require you to choose the workspace subscription(s), log analytics workspace(s), and the replication scenario of choice, to be able to populate the report with information.  

ASR Job History   

Use this report to get information on the site recovery jobs by operation type and completion status. This also helps get details job start time and duration of the job associated with the replicated item and it’s corresponding vault, subscription, etc. It also offers multiple filters such as time range, job operation, resource group, job status and search item to get a more focused report and visualization.  

ASR Replication History  

Use this report to get information on the replicated items and their status over a specific duration of time. In addition to that, it provides the failover date and a detailed list of replication health errors for troubleshooting. It also offers multiple filters such as time range, vault subscription, resource group and search item to get a more focused report and visualization.  

Additional Capabilities 

1. Export to excel: Select the down arrow button in the upper right of any widget, like a table or chart, to export the contents of that widget as an Excel sheet as-is with existing filters applied. To export more rows of a table to Excel, you can increase the number of rows displayed on the page by using the Rows Per Page drop-down arrow at the top of each grid.  
2. Pin to Dashboard: Select the pin button at the top of each widget to pin the widget to your Azure portal dashboard. This feature helps you create customized dashboards tailored to display the most important information that you need.  
3. Cross Tenant Reports: If you use Azure Lighthouse with delegated access to subscriptions across multiple tenant environments, you can use the default subscription filter. Select the filter button in the upper-right corner of the Azure portal to choose all the subscriptions for which you want to see data. Doing so lets you select Log Analytics workspaces across your tenants to view multi-tenanted reports.  

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. From how long ago are reports available? 

A. By default the retention of the Log Analytics Workspace and hence reports is 30 days. The retention for the report is same as that of the Log Analytics Workspace set by you. To change the retention period, see Configure data retention and archive policies in Azure Monitor Logs.  

Q. Can reports show data from the past? 

A. The reports have access to data starting from the time of configuration of log analytics workspace and diagnostic settings. Reports will not show data unless the pre-requisites are met. 

Q. How long after configuring diagnostic settings will I see data in the reports? 

A. After you configure diagnostics, it might take up to 24 hours for the initial data push to complete. After data starts flowing into the Log Analytics workspace, you might not see data in the reports immediately because data for the current partial day isn't shown in the reports. We recommend that you start viewing the reports two days after you configure your vaults to send data to Log Analytics.  

Q. Can I use Azure Policy to configure at scale? 

A. Azure Site Recovery does not provide a built-in Azure Policy definition which automates the configuration of diagnostics settings for all Recovery Services vaults in a given scope, as of today.  

Q. I am looking at the report for last 7 days but I don’t see the data for today. Why? 

A. When the selected value of Time Range is Last 7 days, the report shows records for the last seven completed days. The current day isn't included. The report is updated every end of day UTC time. 

Resources 

• Configure Azure Site Recovery reports - Azure Site Recovery | Microsoft Learn 
• New to Azure Site Recovery? Azure Site Recovery documentation | Microsoft Learn 
• Need Help? Reach out to Microsoft supported products on Q&A | Microsoft Learn azure forum for support and learn from Azure Site Recovery documentation | Microsoft Learn 
• Follow us on Twitter @AzureBackup