Is there a way to temporarily deactivate specific VM's in a backup policy?

[nbustarter380]

Hello,

We are doing some testing and we created 4 test polices (tretestln1, Tretestln2, Tretestln3 and Trestln4) we are going to populate those test polices with VM's that we are currently backing up in different policies (same master server).  We don't want those same exact VM's running backups in two different policies for obvious reasons. Is there a way to deactive (rather then delete) those VM's from their current backup polices?

I know with physical machine backup policies you can just deactivate them. Is there there a way to temporarily deactivate specific VM's (temporarily) and keep them in a policy? The VM's will be put back in there proper policies after testing.

Any Ideas, comments would be helpful.

Best Regards,

[Marianne]

Have you tried the Client 'offline until' feature in Host Properties -> Master -> Client Attributes -> add/select Client name ?

[nbutech]

The same thing you can also do using CLI

if the client does not exit in the client list run form the master's server cmd the command 

bpclient -client <client name> -add -offline

if the client already exists in the client list run the command 

bpclient -client <client name> -update -offline

to check if a client exists in the client list and its configuration run

bpclient -client <client name> -L 

to bring back the client on-line run 

bpclient -client <client name> -update -online

 

[nbustarter380]

Hi Marianne and Nbutech,

Thank you both for those responses, I was not aware of that feature.

I do see "offline backup until"

Question, Will that take specific VM's offline we created 4 test polices (tretestln1, Tretestln2, Tretestln3 and Trestestln4) policies as well? They are the exact same VM's names. 

We Just want to make sure those VM's don't backup in their "original policies" we have setup. Is there someway to tell it what policy we are referring to?

Thanks again for your help  I appreciate it

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

You cannot offline a client for a specific policy. Client offline will offline client for all policies where it exists.

[sdo]

Just wondering what might a real world production use case be for the same VM name active/deactive across different policies?

[nbustarter380]

Hi

Thanks Marianne, Nbutech adn sdo for your responses.

Marianne, that last response answers my question

sdo,

Not sure if you are referring to my question but  the clients (group) wants to test VM's that are in hyper-v polices to see which ones are causing their clusters to go offline. They wanted us to add VM's we are backing to come as close to  the real-world backups. We are working with them in collaboration with MS/Veritas.

Again thanks for all your repsonses

Best Regards

[RiaanBadenhorst]

If you're using intelligent policy just add the specific client to the end of the query and exclude it. Once you're done, just remove the last bits of the query you added

The clients are therefore included (by your original query) and the excluded (by the temporary addition)