Adding a VM Group for VMware Cloud Director

Add a VM group to identify a specific set of virtual machines 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 VMs based on views or automatic discovery rules, see "Views and Rule Options" (below).

Procedure

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

   The Virtual machines page appears.

2. Click the VM groups tab.

   The VM group page appears.

3. Click Add VM group.

   The Add VM group dialog box appears.

4. Provide the following information:

   • Hypervisor: Select the hypervisor.

   • Plan: Select the backup plan.

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

   • Browse and select VMs: 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 use the Organizations view to browse a vCenter, VDC, or vApp.

     You can select VMs under an entity or select an entity to include all VMs under the entity.

   • You can also define rules to discover virtual machines automatically:

     1. Click Add rule.

     2. From the Select rule for list, choose a 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. To change default settings, see Editing VM Group Settings for VMware Cloud Director.

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 VMs that meet specific criteria.

Views

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

• Use the Organizations view to browse a vCenter, organization, VDC, or vApp.

  You can select VMs under an entity or select an entity to include all VMs under the entity.

Rules

You can define rules to discover virtual machines automatically.

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

• Organization: Enter the name of an organization.

• Storage Policy: Enter the name of a storage policy to select virtual machines that use the specified storage policy.

• vApp: Enter the name of a vApp.

• vAppTemplate: Enter the name of a vApp template.

• Catalog: Enter the name of a vApp catalog.

• VDC: Enter the name of a Virtual Data Center (VDC).

• Virtual machine name/pattern: In the Name box, type the display name of the virtual machine or a pattern using wildcards (for example, Test* to identify VMs for which the VM name begins with "Test").

• VM Metadata: In the Name box, type the name of the VM Metadata tag. Select the metadata tag Value type (Date and Time, Number, Text or Yes/No), and then enter the Value accordingly.