Last month I published a blog that looked deeper into the Insider Protection feature that was added as a feature to Veeam Cloud Connect as part of Update 3 for Backup & Replication 9.5. As a refresher, deleted backup protection…or Insider Protection allows the VCSP to enable the deleted backups protection option for specific tenants and looks to add another level of data security for cloud based backups in the case of a malicious user gaining access to the Backup & Replication Console or in the case of accidental deletion by an administrator.

It’s a great feature that every VCSPs offering Cloud Connect should be looking at to productise. That said, there a few things missing from this initial Update 3 release. One of those is that currently there is no way to pull metrics in relation to how much Recycle Bin storage tenant’s are consuming. This means the VCSP hasn’t got a way to account for or charge for storage usage. Ideally this would be retrieved via a PowerShell command-let or API call however at the moment there is no functionality.

As a workaround i’ve come up with a POC PowerShell script that lists all Cloud Connect tenant accounts with Backup Protection enabled and then works out the amount of storage in a the tenant’s _RecycleBin folder and returns that value as well as storage costs as it pertains to the service provider and what a tenant will be charged. The configured retention period is also listed.

There are a few caveats with this release that i’m looking to improve on (or have people fork and improve the code) over the next few weeks. The service provider storage costs are hard coded by default, but i’ve left a section commented out that will prompt for the two values if desired.

Hopefully this works as an example so that VCSPs can begin to offer Insider Protection as part of their Cloud Connect service offering. Having a workaround for cost calculations and reporting is not ideal, however the this feature will evolve in future releases of Backup & Replication. For the moment though, don’t this stop you from looking at Insider Protection for your clients.