Adding Subclient Content for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

You can define discovery rules to automatically assign virtual machines to subclient content. This feature is useful in environments where virtual machines are added, removed, or relocated on a frequent basis, or when you want to manage groups of similar virtual machines using different subclients.

You can also browse for and select virtual machines or other RHEV objects.

Before You Begin

• If a virtual machine is added by browsing and selecting the VM display name, discovery is performed based on the GUID for the named VM. If that virtual machine is later restored in place from a backup, a new GUID is generated, and that virtual machine is no longer included for backups. To include that VM, you must remove the old content rule, then add a new rule or use a name pattern for the virtual machine.

• If an automatic discovery rule for a subclient identifies an entity that cannot be found, a backup job for the subclient fails. For example, if a rule points to a host that has been retired, that is treated as a failure during discovery, and the backup job fails.

• To enable backup jobs to continue when an entity is not found, add the bAllowMissedContent additional setting on the Virtual Server Agent proxy and set the value to true.

• To generate a warning message when a content entity or rule does not return any results, add the bWarnEmptyContentRule additional setting on the Virtual Server Agent proxy and set the value to true.

• For steps to add an additional setting, see Adding or Modifying Additional Settings from the CommCell Console.

Procedure

1. From the CommCell Browser, expand Client Computers > virtualization_client > Virtual Server> RedHat > backup_set.

2. Right-click the subclient, and then click Properties.

3. In the Subclient Properties dialog box, click the Content tab.

4. Browse or define a rule to select an object:

   • To browse for an object:

     1. Click Browse.

     2. Select a view from the list at the top left of the Browse dialog box. You can select objects at any level to include virtual machines for the selected object.

     3. System - Browse hosts, data centers, the storage or clusters under each data center, and virtual machines.

     4. Clusters - Browse clusters, hosts, and virtual machines.

     5. Hosts - Browse hosts and virtual machines.

     6. Storage - Browse storage and virtual machines.

     7. VMs - Browse virtual machines.

     8. Click OK.

   • To define a rule:

     1. Click Add.

     2. In the Rule Group box, select the rule type from the drop-down list and enter the appropriate information in the box on the right:

5. VM Name /Pattern	Enter a pattern (for example, Test* to identify VMs for which the VM name begins with "Test"). Note If a VM is added to subclient content using a specific name (without wildcards), and the software cannot find the VM based on that name during a backup job, the backup job completes with the error: Virtual machine [VMName] was not found.
   Host	Enter the host name as it appears in the Red Hat data center. When you add a host, all virtual machines on the host are included in the backup.
   Guest OS	Enter the exact name of the operating system or a pattern to identify an operating system group (for example, Microsoft* to identify any virtual machine that has a version of the Windows operating system).
   Guest DNS Hostname	Enter a pattern to identify a hostname or domain (for example, myhost.mycompany.com to identify a specific host or *mycompany.com to identify all hosts on that domain).
   Power State	Select one of the following options to identify virtual machines: Powered On - VMs that are powered on. Powered Off - VMs that are powered off. Other - VMs with a different power on status, such as Pause or Saved.
   Tag	(Only for RHEV 4.0 or later) Enter a tag that is defined in RHEV-M that has been applied to virtual machines or hosts.

6. To define multiple rules in a rule group, click + and define another rule. The following options are available for a rule group with multiple rules:

7. If you define multiple rules in a rule group, you can indicate whether virtual machines are selected when they match all of the rules (selected by default), or when they match any of the rules.

8. To exclude virtual machines based on any of the criteria, you can use the Does Not Equal operator for one or more of the rules in a rule group. (For rule groups with a single rule, the only operator you can use is Equals.)

   For simple rules defined in the Contents of subclient list (not in a rule group), virtual machines are selected if they match any of the rules defined for the subclient.

9. Click OK.

   The rules you defined and the objects you selected appear in the Contents of subclient list on the Content tab.

10. Click Preview to view all virtual machines identified by the rules or selections you have made. These virtual machines will be backed up when you perform a backup for the subclient.

11. Click OK.