# Creating a VM Group for Hyper-V

You can create a group of Hyper-V VMs that you want to back up or restore together.

Important

For virtual machines that use Virtual Fibre Channel (vFC) disks or physical pass-through disks, ensure that Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is enabled on the VM group. Disabling CBT can cause incremental backups to fail or produce inconsistent results.

## Before You Begin

- Define a backup plan that specifies the storage, retention, and backup schedule for the VM group.

## Add the Hypervisor

1. From the Hypervisor list, select the hypervisor to create a VM group for.

2. Click Next.

   The Add VM Group page appears.

## Add VM Group

1. In Name, enter a descriptive name for the VM group.

2. To create rules that auto-discover and select VMs to back up, do the following:

   1. Click Add, and then select Rules.

      The Add rule dialog box appears.

   2. From the list, select the type of rule to create, and then specify the rule:

      - Browse: Select specific VMs. (Selecting this option changes the Add rule dialog box to the Add content dialog box.)

      - Guest DNS hostname: Select VMs based on a hostname or a domain. For example, to select hosts on the "mycompany.com" domain, enter Guest DNS hostname | Ends with | mycompany.com.

      - Guest OS: Select VMs based on operating system. For example, to select VMs that are not Windows, enter Guest OS | Does not contain | Windows.

      - Host: Select VMs based on hostname. For example, to select VMs that are on hosts that include "acme" in their names, enter Host | Contains | acme.

      - Power state: Select VMs based on a power status of On, Off, or Other. (Other includes statuses such as Suspended).

      - Virtual machine name or pattern: Select VMs based on their names. For example, to select VMs that have a name that includes "east", enter Virtual machine name or pattern | Contains | east.

   3. Click Save.

3. To select VMs in other ways, do the following:

   1. Click Add, and then select Content.

      The Add content dialog box appears.

   2. From the Browse and select VMs list, select one of the following:

      - VMs: Select specific VMs.

      - Hosts and clusters: Select VMs by the hosts or clusters they are in.

      - Datastores and datastore clusters: Select VMs by the datastores or datastore clusters they are in.

   3. Click Save.

4. To see the VMs that are selected for the VM group, click the Preview button.

5. Click Submit.

   The Plan page appears.

## Add a Plan

1. For Plan, select an existing backup plan or create a new backup plan.

   Steps to create a backup plan

   1. Click the add button .

      The Create backup plan dialog box appears.

   2. In the Plan name box, enter a descriptive name for the backup plan.

   3. For Storage, select the storage pool where you want to store backups.

   4. For the backup plan settings, select pre-defined settings or create custom settings:

      - To select pre-defined settings, under Retention rules, select one of the following:

        - Select Standard retention to retain the incremental backups for 1 month.

        - Select Extended retention for optimized storage where the incremental backups of primary and secondary copies are retained for 1 month, and extended retention for monthly and yearly full backups.

          Note

          The Extended retention option is available only when the secondary copy backup is selected.

      - To create custom settings, select Custom plan, and then specify the following:

        - For Retention, specify the amount of time to retain the backup jobs.

        - For Retention monthly full (Secondary copy), specify the amount of time to retain the monthly full backup on secondary copy.

        - For Retention yearly full (Secondary copy), specify the amount of time to retain the yearly full backup on secondary copy.

        - For Backups run every, specify how often to run backups.

   5. Click Done.

2. To see the VMs that are selected for the VM group, click the Preview button.

3. Click Submit.

   The Summary page of the appears.

## Summary

1. Review the summary.

2. Click Finish.

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