Adding a VM Group for VMware

Add a VM group to identify a specific set of virtual machines to back up or restore.

Note

To enable backup validation for VMware virtual machines, including VMs that run applications, create a VM group that contains only those VMs, and then edit the VM group configuration to enable backup validation.

For more information, see Backup Validation and Editing VM Group Settings for VMware.

Before You Begin

Define a server plan that specifies the storage, retention, and backup schedule to be used for the VM group.
Review the following options:
To enable IntelliSnap backups, create a plan and add the plan to the VM group. For more information, see Getting Started with IntelliSnap.

Procedure

From the navigation pane, go to Protect > Virtualization.

The Virtual machines page appears.
On the Hypervisors tab, click the hypervisor.

The hypervisor page appears.
Under VM groups, click Add VM group.

The Add VM group dialog box appears.
From the Hypervisors list, select the hypervisor where the VM group content is located.
In the Name box, enter a name for the VM group.
Add VMs or configure a rule to automatically add new VMs:
- To add VM group content manually, click Browse and select VMs. On the Add virtual machines page, select the VMs you want to add, and then click OK.
- To discover VMs automatically, click Add rule and in the Add rule dialog box, define a rule, and then click Save.
From the Plan list, select a plan that specifies the storage, retention, and backup schedule to be used for the VM group.
To see a list of the VMs that are designated for backup based on your current selections or to run a backup test to verify that your backup configuration is successful, click Preview.

The Preview page appears.
1. In the Actions column for the VM, click the icon, and then click Test backup.
  
  The Test VM backup page appears.
2. Configure the following:
  - Transport mode: Select the transport mode for the backup job: Auto, HotAdd, NBD, NBD SSL, NAS, or SAN.
    
    By default, Auto is selected. This option uses the best transport mode for the environment.
  - Access node: Select the access node to use for the backup.
    
    If you do not select an access node, the Commvault software picks the first access node that is specified on the Configurations page for the hypervisor that the VM group resides in.
3. Click Test backup.
  
  The Commvault backup utility runs the backup test, and then displays the results.
4. Click OK.
Click Save.

Result

VM groups are created with default settings for backup options. To change default settings, see Editing VM Group Settings for VMware.