Reporting

BVQ offers you the feature of reporting.

If you like to create a report, you need a template. This will be used as a blueprint for created reports. BVQ will be delivered with ready to use templates for the supported platforms.
These are basically overview reports for storage capacity and performance.

If you like to create a report, login to the BVQ-Server and by clicking on the Reporting-tab.

Using the subtabs you can

manage generated reports
administrate the templates, that are used to create a report
schedule the reports

Reports

By selecting the Reports-tab, you have access to all generated Reports.

Here, you see the information of currently running and generated Reports.

With the action buttons, you can download a Report (1), create a new one (2), edit the template of a self created Report (3), get the information about a Report (4) or delete a single one (5).

Templates

If you like to manage your reporting templates, just choose the Templates-tab.

Here you can create a new template (1), see alle generated Reports of a template (2), generate a new report out of a template (3), create a schedule for the report (4), edit a self created template (5), clone an existing template (6) or to delete a self created template (7) .

Scheduling

In this tab, you see all created schedules for the different templates.

You have now the possibility, to see a list for all created reports out of a template (1). If you didn't changed the default for the TTL during the installation,the oldest report can be created before 30 days. Also you can edit a single schedule (2), get a link to the latest generated report where you also get the option to download that report (3) or to delete a single schedule (4).

We want to build a more complex report that should consist of tables, charts and loops.

With this link you can download the template that we want to create in this document.
Please remember that this is just an example.
Use this document to learn how to import and export report templates.

Only templates that do not use favorites for charts or tables can be exported!
BVQ thus prevents dependencies between installations.

Export a reporting template
1. Go to Reports → Templates and find the report template
2. use the button
  to download the reporting template
Import a reporting template
1. Go to Reports → Templates
2. use the button
  to import a reporting template

We will use snippet loops in this report so some words about this!

Reports with Loops

A loop is an iteration over an object type. A classic report could be.

Tables across all vCenter
Aggregated charts across all vCenter
Loop over all vCenter iterates over each individual vCenter
- vCenter table
- vCenter charts

Or more complex

Tables across all vCenter
Aggregated charts across all vCenter
Loop over all vCenter iterates over each individual vCenter
- vCenter table
- vCenter charts
- Tables across all VMCluster in vCenter
- Aggregated charts across all VMCluster in vCenter
- Loop over all vmCluster iterates over each individual VMCluster in vCenter
  - VMCluster table
  - VMCluster charts
  - Tables across all VMHosts in VMCluster
  - Aggregated charts across all VMHosts in VMCluster
  - Loop over all VMHosts iterates over each individual VMHosts in VMCluster
    - VMHost table
    - VMHost charts
    - ...

As you can see, loops can be nested inside each other.
This can lead to very long reports that also have a long computing time. But the advantage is obvious.
These reports are calculated overnight, can have long periods of time, and the next day all measured values are available in a PDF file.

Some considerations about loops:

Always plan with loops - this makes reports much more flexible
Actually we cannot drag and drop snippets across loops. So it is not an option to start without a loop and add it later. This will change in future.