Navigation

Sidebar Navigation

The Commvault Command Center^TM navigation is divided into four major sections.

The top section is the Guided setup and Dashboards which help with initial configuration and when you first log into the system.

• The Protect, Activate, and Disaster Recovery sections provide views of systems in the datacenter and in the cloud based on how they are protected. Much of the activity that most users will focus on is within the Protect section—unless you have specific needs for Activate or Orchestrate products.
• The navigation menu can be customized using the Customize section under Manage to hide products or features that are not being used.
• The Jobs, Reports, and Monitoring section are day-to-day operational functions that a typical administrator uses to check the health of systems and look at systems that need attention. The dashboard is a good place to get an overview of daily system health. Clicking on a specific item in the dashboard will take you into the Monitoring or Reports section to look a little deeper at why something is reporting that it needs attention on the dashboard.
• The Storage, Manage, Developer tools, and Web console are system wide configuration and management functions that are typically setup once and periodically reviewed or reconfigured as needed.
• The Manage section includes security administration, as well as systems administration to help reconfigure a CommCell^® environment to adapt to a constantly changing corporate environment.

The Commvault Command Center^TM layout

The Commvault Command Center^TM has an easy-to-use sidebar navigation menu. Many sections are common to all solutions. These sections provide tools that allow you to configure CommCell^® components, run day-to-day operations and monitor the environment. If the sidebar does not fit the window, it is possible to use the mouse to scroll the sidebar up or down.

If you are looking for a specific section of the sidebar, use the Filter navigation box to type characters and sort the sidebar content.

Guided Setup

The Guided setup window is used to configure or add features to the Commvault Command Center^TM products, which are Protect, Activate and Disaster Recovery. To add a feature, select the appropriate product tab, and locate and click the feature tile. If you need to learn more about the feature, click the link that opens the Commvault^® Online documentation and provides additional information.

Dashboard

The dashboard view provides an overall view of the status of the CommCell^® and client protection jobs. By default, the view displays information about all clients. If needed, other specific dashboards can be accessed.

Use your mouse to hover over and identify active areas of the dashboard that can be expanded for additional information.

Products and Features

The product sections contain a subsection for every feature that was added to the Commvault Command Center^TM, such as Virtualization, File servers, etc. Each feature subsections expands to display information about entities that belong to the features, such as database instances, hypervisors, virtual machines and more. In some views, each entity has an Actions button that provides access to management options.

Jobs

The Job view provides monitoring functionality for all active jobs within the CommCell^® environment. The Jobs view displays current running jobs by default. But it can also be used to see the job history of different time periods such as the last 24 hours or the last three months. From this view, any job can be controlled to kill, suspend, resume and view the job logs.

A progress bar clearly indicates the progress of the job, while its Status column indicates if the job is still running, and if so in which phase it is, or if it failed, is suspended or was killed.

Reports

The reports view can be expanded to display available reports as tiles. To generate any of the reports, simply click the tile to generate up-to-date information. Most reports have a graphic view followed by a detailed table. Filters can be applied to table sections. Table columns can also be selected to be displayed or deselected to be hidden, allowing to customize the report to clearly identify the relevant information. Reports can also be scheduled and sent by email to an administrator or a distribution list.

Alerts

The alerts view displays all alerts that were triggered in the CommCell^® environment. Displayed alerts can be filtered to a specific severity level. The Alert info column provides a link to display additional information about the alert. Use the checkbox to select one or many alerts. Use the Delete link to delete selected alerts. This link appears when at least one box is checked.

Events

All Commvault^® software related events are reported in the Events view. By default, 500 events are displayed, but the event log can maintain up to 10,000 events or 7 days of events. Events can be filtered by severity level and can also provide Job ID and Event ID links that can be clicked to display detailed information about the event or the job that triggered it.

Storage

The storage section and subsections allow managing the CommCell^® storage. Different storage types can be added. They are as follows:

• Disk - Direct-attached, SAN-based or NAS storage can be defined as Commvault^® disk storage. Deduplication can be enabled for this type of storage.
• Cloud - Any supported cloud vendor storage can be defined as Commvault^® cloud storage. Deduplication can be enabled for this type of storage.
• Tape - Removable tape storage units can be configured as Commvault^® tape storage. This type of storage cannot be deduplicated.
• HyperScale - Use this type of storage when using Commvault HyperScale^TM appliance or HyperScale Reference Architecture.

CommCell

The CommCell view provides tools to configure or control CommCell^® level settings. The following are some of the settings that can be configured:

• Activity Control – Allows to easily enable/disable specific or all activities for a CommCell.
• Email Settings – Allows configuring the connection information of the organization email server that is used to relay emailed reports or alerts on behalf of Commvault^® software.
• Default Plans – Allows setting the default backup plan that is used for each solution.

Servers

The Servers view lists all servers on which Commvault^® software is installed, regardless of the feature to which it belongs. This provides a global view of which entities can be managed using the Actions button.

The client name of an entity can also be clicked to reach additional configuration options.

Server Groups

The Server groups view displays all existing client computer groups. Click on the client computer group name to display configuration options. The Actions button provides access to options such as deleting the group.

Companies

The companies section allows to create companies (also referred to as tenants) in a Managed Services Providers (MSP) environment. Each company is logically isolated and tenant administrators of a company cannot access data nor information from other companies. To create a new company, simply click the Add company link.

Plans

The Plans view displays and lets you manage all existing backup plans created in the CommCell^® environment. A plan can be modified by clicking its plan name or can be deleted by clicking the Actions button. A new plan can also be created by using the Create plan link.

Infrastructure

The Infrastructure view displays and lets you manage additional CommCell^® components. The Hybrid file stores tile allows to configure NFS ObjectStore server shares and publish them to users. The Arrays tile allows to configure storage array communication allowing to use the IntelliSnap^® feature when protecting clients with datasets hosted on the array. The MediaAgent tile provides tools to deploy MediaAgents and configure their settings.

Regions

The regions section allows to define regions used in an elastic plan. An elastic plan is used to protect geographically scattered clients (i.e. roaming users laptops) by sending the data to the closest MediaAgent storage target. This greatly simplifies management by preventing from having to create many plans based on storage location.

Additional Administration Views

Several additional subsections are available from the Administration section. They are as follows:

• License – Provides licensing information and allows to apply a license file.
• Customization – Configures the Commvault Command Center^TM layout and colors.
• System – Configures global exceptions, system owner permissions, DR backups, download software, and more.
• Network – Configures network components such as network topologies and data interface pairs.

Security

The security section allows a user to create and manage users, user groups, and domains that are used in security associations. The security associations define access and permitted tasks on CommCell^® entities that are assigned to users.
From this section, the following security components can be configured:

• CommCell users – Users created in Commvault software used for access to the console.
• CommCell user groups – User groups created in Commvault software used in security association.
• Roles – Set of access permissions and permitted tasks for users. This set of permissions is assigned to users through a security association including the role.
• Identity servers – Domains that are integrated to Commvault software to leverage domain user accounts and user groups instead of CommCell users and groups. Also allows to integrate with third-party identity providers such as Okta and ADFS.
• Key management servers - Third-party key management servers managing hardware and/or software encryption keys.
• Credential manager - Stores all credentials required to access resources such a NAS or cloud storage.

Replication

The replication section provides tools to synchronize virtual machines and file systems from a source system to a target infrastructure, potentially in a remote site. The section is divided in tabs allowing to configure replication and failover automation:

Replication Groups

The replication groups view lets you configure Commvault^® Live Sync replication for groups of virtual machines. This efficient method prevents the Commvault^® administrator from having to configure replication pairs, one VM at a time. This view displays configured groups and lets you add addition VM groups.

Failover Groups

Commvault^® software implements disaster recovery orchestration for virtual machines. If a VM or a group of VMs suffer from any type of disaster, Commvault^® software provides mechanisms to failover the virtual machines to a secondary site. This feature requires the implementation of Commvault^® Live Sync. The Failover Groups view displays the configured recovery groups and lets you add additional groups.

Storage

The Storage section allows configuration of recovery point stores on the destination site when replicating virtual machines using Live Sync I/O. For each replication pair, application-consistent recovery points and updates are recorded in the store, allowing to recover VMs when needed.

Recovery Targets

Commvault^® software provides options to mount virtual machines from Commvault^® storage, using Live Mount or virtual labs. The backup administrator can set boundaries, for users mounting VMs, by using recovery targets policies. These policies allow to define settings, such as where the VM is mounted (host), or its lifespan (retention). The Recovery targets view displays existing policies and allows you to create more.

Continuous Replication Monitor

The Continuous Replication monitor displays the replication status for virtual machine pairs that are replicated using the Live Sync I/O feature.

Periodic Replication Monitor

The Commvault Command Center^TM lets an administrator configure virtual machine, database and file system replication from the replication groups view. The replication monitor view displays the replication status of each configured replication pairs.