Solved

How-To backup VMware Custom Attributes

  • 22 February 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 540 views

Badge +2

Hello!

I’m new on this community, but I’m a CommVault user since 2015. Glad to be here and nice to meet you all!

Today I had to urgently (as usual) restore 2 VMs, then I got an email from VMware team saying: “Hey, you missed to write custom attributes on the restored VMs!”

Looking at the VMs I noticed that they were right and VMware Custom Attributes were empty. We have +1500 VMs and we use them to keep a log of who installed it, when, which app is running on etc etc.

So finally my question is: is there a way to include certain VMware custom attributes in the VSA subclient? And of course restore together with the VM? I don’t want to include all, only the ones I care of.

Thanks in advance

 

Stefano

 

icon

Best answer by asancheti 22 February 2021, 16:17

View original

6 replies

Userlevel 2
Badge +3

Hello,

Currently you can assign the rule on the VSA subclient\VM group to include\exclude particular VM using custom attributes.

we are working on a feature where we will also backup and restore these custom attributes.

we will also consider selective backup of custom attributes in our design.

 

-Ashwin

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

Hello,

Currently you can assign the rule on the VSA subclient\VM group to include\exclude particular VM using custom attributes.

we are working on a feature where we will also backup and restore these custom attributes.

we will also consider selective backup of custom attributes in our design.

 

-Ashwin

Hey Ashwin!  Awesome news!

Is there a CMR that @Stefano Villa can track?

Userlevel 6
Badge +15

Hello,

Currently you can assign the rule on the VSA subclient\VM group to include\exclude particular VM using custom attributes.

we are working on a feature where we will also backup and restore these custom attributes.

we will also consider selective backup of custom attributes in our design.

 

-Ashwin

Hello Ashwin,

 

I’d like to hear about the release of this feature. Is it available and if so in which version ?

If not, what’s the expected release ? 

More and more people is asking more services than just ‘backup/restore’ of VMs (in VMWare), and need to get tags and custom attributes also backup/restored.

 

Thanks,

Laurent.

Badge

Commvault version 11.28 restores back the custom attributes that were on the original VM.

 

Documentation: https://documentation.commvault.com/v11/expert/vm_custom_attributes_and_vm_vapp_options_support_01.html

Userlevel 7
Badge +23

Hey @Stefano Villa and welcome!

I did a little digging and it looks like we can through vCenter, but I have not found the actual instructions yet:

https://documentation.commvault.com/commvault/v11_sp20/article?p=31993.htm

I’ll ask around internally and get back to you.

Badge +2

Hello @asancheti, we do not use custom attributes to select VMs. Instead, we select the entire VMware datacenter and if needed we exclude certain VMs by filtering display name (i.e. *iis* *exchange* etc).

 

By having the C.A. added to the backupset is a simply nice-to-have, because it allows you to restore the entire VM state (and with “entire VM state” I mean the VM itself and custom attributes/notes) at the date of backup.

Thanks for your reply and I looking forward to test this feature soon!

 

Reply