Third-Party Backup Providers
If some of your customers are protected by a third-party backup product, Breeze can read that product’s status and show it alongside Breeze’s own backups. A device protected by the provider counts as covered, so it no longer shows up as “no backup” just because Breeze did not run the job.
N-able Cove Data Protection is the supported provider today.
Before You Start
Section titled “Before You Start”- Partner accounts only. Connections belong to your MSP (partner) account and cover every organization under it. Organization-scoped users cannot see or manage them.
- Who can manage a connection. Adding, editing, testing, syncing, deleting and mapping customers requires a partner user with organization write permission, access to all organizations, and MFA. Partner users with access to only selected organizations can view the connection but not change it.
- A Cove API user. In the Cove Management Console, go to Management → Users → API Users, select your top-level customer in the Customer list, and click Add API User. Give it a login name (for example,
breeze-sync) and the most restrictive role that can still read customers and backup statistics. Copy the token when it is shown — Cove displays it only once; if you lose it, delete the API user and create a new one. An API user cannot sign in to the console, so two-factor authentication does not apply to it.
Connecting Cove
Section titled “Connecting Cove”- Go to Integrations and open the Backup tab. (The old address
/settings/integrations/backupredirects here.) - Click Add connection and choose Cove Data Protection.
- Enter a Connection name (for example, Main Cove account). For Cove partner name, enter the name of the customer the API user was created under, exactly as Cove shows it. Enter the API user’s login name in API user login name and its token in API user token.
- Optionally turn on Show the provider name in the client portal. It is off by default, so customer-facing views use the generic label Managed cloud backup instead of the vendor name.
- Save. Breeze signs in to Cove before saving anything — if the login fails, nothing is created and the error is shown. On success, the first sync starts right away.
The token is stored encrypted and is never shown again. To change it, use Re-enter credentials on the connection card; the new token is tested before it replaces the old one, so a failed change never leaves the connection without a working login.
Connection card actions
Section titled “Connection card actions”| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Test connection | Signs in to Cove and reports the account name and how many customers are visible. |
| Sync now | Queues an immediate sync instead of waiting for the next scheduled one. |
| Active toggle | Turning a connection off stops syncing and resolves its open alerts. |
| Delete | Removes the connection and its synced devices and history from Breeze. Cove itself is untouched. Open alerts from the connection are resolved. |
The card also shows the last sync time, customer and device counts, how many devices are linked or ambiguous, and how many devices sit under unmapped customers.
Mapping Customers to Organizations
Section titled “Mapping Customers to Organizations”Each Cove customer must be mapped to a Breeze organization before its devices appear anywhere in Breeze. Devices under an unmapped customer are counted on the connection card but never stored.
On each sync Breeze maps a new customer automatically only when the Cove customer’s external code is set to a Breeze organization ID.
A customer whose name exactly matches one organization name (ignoring case) is not mapped automatically. It stays unmapped until you map it yourself. Before v0.118.0 such name matches were mapped on sync; mappings made that way are not changed by the upgrade, but check them. To have customers map themselves, set each Cove customer’s external code to its Breeze organization ID.
An organization is only auto-mapped to one customer. Auto-mapped rows show an Auto badge.
To map a customer yourself, pick an organization in the Customer mapping list, or choose Unmapped (kept) to deliberately leave it out. Manual choices are never overridden by auto-mapping. Re-mapping a customer immediately removes its devices, history and open alerts from the old organization and starts a sync so they reappear under the new one.
Device Matching
Section titled “Device Matching”Within a mapped organization, Breeze links each Cove device to a Breeze device automatically:
- A Cove device whose computer name matches exactly one Breeze device’s hostname or display name (ignoring case) is linked.
- If several devices share that name, Breeze narrows the match by MAC address.
- If there is still no single match, or the matching device is already linked to another provider device, the Cove device stays unlinked and is counted as Ambiguous on the connection card.
Decommissioned devices are never matched, and Microsoft 365 backup accounts are shown as accounts rather than linked to a device. If an automatic link is wrong, click Unlink on the device’s external backup card (below). The Cove device stays in Cove and can be linked again later.
Sync, History and Alerts
Section titled “Sync, History and Alerts”Each connection syncs every 30 minutes. A connection whose login Cove rejects is marked Credentials rejected and stops syncing until you use Re-enter credentials with a working login. If a connection has not synced for more than two sync intervals, its devices show as Unknown health and the backup health view shows a banner that provider data is out of date.
Breeze keeps a daily history for each provider device (the worst status seen that day), shown as the Last 28 days strip. History older than 60 days is pruned.
Linked endpoints raise device alerts. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup workloads, including Cove Microsoft 365 accounts, raise organization-level alerts with no device, titled with the workload and customer name (or organization name). Both use the same conditions and severities:
| Condition | Severity |
|---|---|
| Backup failed | High |
| Backup over quota | High |
| No backups recorded | High |
| No successful backup in 48 hours | High |
| Backup completed with errors (or interrupted) | Medium |
| Nothing selected for backup | Medium |
To avoid noise from one bad poll, an alert is raised only when the same condition is seen on two consecutive syncs. It resolves automatically on the first sync where the condition no longer holds, with the note Condition cleared by provider sync. Alerts also resolve when the workload, connection or customer mapping goes away. Indefinitely suppressed alerts keep their mute when the condition clears or changes.
Where Provider Data Appears
Section titled “Where Provider Data Appears”- Backup overview → Backup health. One table of every managed device plus every device the provider reports, with status, last successful backup, data sources, selected and used size, errors and the 28-day history. Filter by health, by source (Breeze or provider), or search by device or organization. Summary counts show coverage, provider-only endpoints and Microsoft 365 accounts. Partner users in all-organizations mode see this health view across every organization.
- Device → Backup tab. An External backup card sits above Breeze’s own backup sections, showing the Cove device name, status, last successful backup, last session, provider customer, data sources, sizes, errors and the 28-day history.
- Attention items. A device covered by a recent provider backup is no longer listed as overdue.
Limitations
Section titled “Limitations”- Status only: no restores, backup runs, or configuration changes through Breeze.
- Cove Data Protection is the only supported provider.
- Cove users with two-factor authentication cannot be used for the connection.
- Unlinked endpoints and unmapped customers raise no alerts. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace workloads raise organization-level alerts rather than device alerts.