Adding a VM Group for Alibaba Cloud

Add a VM group to identify a specific set of instances to back up or restore.

Before You Begin

• Define a server plan that specifies the storage, retention, and backup schedule to be used for the VM group.

• To select instances based on views or automatic discovery rules, see "Views and Rule Options" (below).

• The image that was used to create an instance must be present when you perform a backup operation. If the image is not available when the backup is performed, a browse operation of guest files and folders from that backup fails.

Procedure

1. From the navigation pane, go to Protect > Virtualization.

   The Virtual machines page appears.

2. On the Hypervisors tab, click the hypervisor.

   The hypervisor page appears.

3. Click Add VM group.

   The Add VM group dialog box appears.

4. Provide the following information:

   • Hypervisor: Select the hypervisor.

   • Name: Type a descriptive name for the VM group.

   • Browse and select instances: Expand the tree below this field to select the content for the VM group. Click Select all to quickly select all objects or Clear all to remove all current selections.

     You can select a view from the list to control the browse display.

     To discover instances automatically:

     1. Click Add rule.

     2. From the Select rule for list, choose the rule type.

     3. From the Which matches with list, select Equals, Contains, Starts with, or Ends with.

     4. In the Name box, provide a value as required for the type of rule.

     5. Click OK.

   • Under Backup configuration, choose one of the following options:

     • Enable the Use backup plan option to associate a plan with the hypervisor.

       From the Plan list, select a plan that specifies the storage, retention, and backup schedule to be used for the VM group.

     • Disable the Use backup plan option to specify a storage policy and schedule policy that were defined using CommCell Console.

       From the Storage policy list, you can select a storage policy that was previously defined in CommCell Console or a plan that was defined in Command Center.

       Optional: You can select a schedule policy that was previously defined using CommCell Console.

5. Click Save to save the VM group.

VM groups are created with default settings for backup options.

Views and Rule Options

When you define content or filters for a VM group, you can change the view and select specific entities, or define rules to automatically select instances that meet specific criteria.

Views

When you browse to select instances for VM group content or filters, you can select a browse method from the Browse and select VMs list, and then expand the tree below the list to select instances for the VM group, or to clear previous selections.

You can select one of the following options from the list to control the browse display:

• By region: Select an instance within a region.

• By zone: Display zones under each region and select an instance within a zone.

Rules

You can define rules to discover instances automatically.

When you add a rule, from the Select rule for list, you can choose one of the following rules and then, from the Which matches with list, select Equals, Contains, Starts with, or Ends with:

• Instance name/pattern: In the Name box, type the display name of the instance or a pattern using wildcards (for example, Test* to identify instances for which the instance name begins with "Test").

• Zone: In the Name box, type the name of the zone or a pattern using wildcards (for example, us-east* to identify zones for which the zone name begins with "us-east"). When you add a zone, all instances in the zone are included in backups.