NetBackup 7.1 Selecting VM's in large environment

[Jaykullar]

Hi All,

I am looking at adding a lot of VM's for backup into a 7.1 solution. I have about 1000 VM's to backup and wanted to split them up into 4 policies, is there anyway to add say 250 VM's into a policy without adding them in manually or browsing the whole estate and selecting each one?

I know i can use the query builder but due to the size of the enviornment and me wanting to backup a group of clients at different times it would be easier to specific client names in multiple policies to split the load and backup windows.

Thanks,

Jay

[Jaykullar]

Hi Stuart,

The thing is not all VM's in the ESX servers are to be backed up, and there are multiple clusters of replication so id only want to backup 1 of the several VM's which are identical.

I currently using an annotation flag for the few i backup.

I want to load balance the backups to two media servers and two msdp's (per site) so thought doing this via policy would be the simplist option, i.e selecting a VM backup host and then splitting up the clients then the backup window.

Thanks

Jay

[Anonymous]

Why not use folder based or moreover resource based selection in the query? Rather than name based.

If you are concerned over load, then a resource based query is where you should target. ie resourcepool or ESX server etc.

EDIT: Folder based you could just create 4 folders in vsphere. And drag 250 VM's into each. Then specify a folder per policy. Ending up with 4 netbackup policies.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I recommend using Folders. And pigeon holing your VM's into that, not need to edit annotations. Quick and simple. You could even use subfolders and exclude certain VM's in those also. Very flexible.

We use this and never looked back. When deploying new VM's we decide on the folder based on whether to backup or not.

This of course unless you use Folders for something else.

[Jaykullar]

Thanks Stuart, I have been looking at various ways to backup them up. Im still considering my options.

[Mark_Solutions]

If it the load on the backup servers / ESX / vCenter that you are concerned about why not just use the Resource limits to control things

You could then have everything in just your two polcies (one for each media server) and just use the annotation to exclude the ones you don't want to back up

So your query could be :

Policy1 : everything for esx1, esx2 and esx3 but exclude annotation of "nobackup"

Policy2 : everything for esx4, esx5 and esx6 but exclude annotation of "nobackup"

Resource limits can be found in Master Server Host properties right at the bottom

Hope this helps

[Anonymous]

Let us know how you get on. And what you did to get it working the way you wanted.

Cheers

[Jaykullar]

Mark / Stuart

Many thanks for you input. I have created multiple policies and now in my testing phase. My query is:

ESXserver Contains "xxxxxxxxxxxx"

AND NOT Annotation Contains "xxxxxx"

However these annotations are not being excluded.  I backup a smaller enviornment using annotations to include only and this works.

Any idea's?

Thanks

J

[Mark_Solutions]

The annotations must be in the notes field on the VMWare host and not in any "annotations" field - just the way it works where what NBU calls annotations is actually notes in VMWare and not Annotations in VMWare!

Also, not sure if you are really using x's but I would use something else as the two work against each other - sure they are just examples in your above message though!

[Jaykullar]

Thanks for that Mark. I've added to the notes section and it works fine now :)  You and Stuart have both provided solutions.

Yeah the x's are just examples, wouldnt be wise to do that!

I do have a question regards restores which i will start a new topic.

Thanks

Jay