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vSphere Tag Support (VMware)

With vSphere 5.5 and later, you can identify virtual machines based on vSphere tags and categories. When you browse and select a tag or category, or when you add a rule that identifies a tag or category, you can automatically discover and select all virtual machines under any VMware entities that are marked with that tag or category.

When Commvault Service Pack 8 or later is used with vSphere 6.5 or a more recent version of vSphere, tag support is included for adding subclient content or defining filters.

For streaming backups, backup and restore operations preserve vSphere tags on virtual machines. IntelliSnap backups do not include vSphere tags.

Considerations

  • To use tags with supported versions of vSphere from 5.5 through 6.0, install a PowerCLI version that is compatible with your vSphere version on the VSA proxy. For more information, see VMware Product Interoperability Matrices. The highest version of PowerCLI that can be used for Commvault tag support is 6.5.x.

  • To use tags with vSphere 6.5 or more recent versions of vSphere:

    • VMware vAPI Endpoint services must be running on vCenter.

    • PowerCLI is not required.

  • For tag support when using a VSA proxy running on Linux, you must use vSphere 6.5 or a more recent version.

  • Verify that the vSphere password for the hypervisor does not contain any of the following special characters or any non-ASCII characters: ampersand (&), semicolon (;), double quotation mark ("), single quotation mark ('), caret (^), backslash (\), percentage sign (%), left angle bracket (<), right angle bracket (>).

    For more information, see the VMware KB article vSphere 5.5 Single Sign-On Issues due to Special Characters in administrator@vsphere.local password (2060637).

    If the vSphere password contains invalid characters, you might not be able to select VMs based on tags.

Entity Support

You can select VMs based on tags that are applied to the following entities:

  • Cluster

  • Datacenter

  • Datastore

  • Datastore Cluster

  • Folder

  • Host

  • Resource Pool

  • vApp

  • Virtual Machine

You cannot select VMs based on tags that are applied to the following entities:

  • Distributed Port Group

  • Distributed Switch

  • Library

  • Library Item

  • Network

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