FEATURE REQUEST - Prefix tag for replicas

[tstout]

Not sure if this is the proper forum location, but since there isn't a dedicated feature request forum I'm putting it here -- please move as appropriate.

FEATURE REQUEST: When creating a replication job, can we get the option in job settings for the tag that's appended to the VM name be a prefix instead of a suffix (or allow both prefix and suffix). That way if we sort a list of VMs alphabetically, all of the replicas will sort together (and separately from any non-replica VMs on the host). Thanks.

[vnikiforov]

Hello, Todd,

Could you please clarify the idea? So we are talking about HyperV right? Because Hyper-V manager UI doesn't have filter\search option and we only can sort VMs by name? Is my understanding accurate?
Just for comparison in VMWARE I just enter replica in the search bar and it shows all replica VMs.

[tstout]

LOL - Yes, I'm on Hyper-v struggling with Hyper-v manager. Didn't run into the issue when we were using vCenter oddly enough. (Thanks, Broadcom!)

We store the replicas on a stand-alone non-clustered host with independent storage, but for us, that host also needs to run a couple of non-replica VM workloads that, due to naming conventions, gets lost in the list of vm replicas. Was thinking that instead of:

vm1_replica
vm2_replica
vm3 <--- vm3 is an actual non-replica running production vm
vm4_replica
vm5 <-- also a production vm, but is generally offline (such as a root certificate services host)

it would be nice to have (prefix only):
_replica-vm1
_replica-vm2
_replica-vm4
vm3
vm5

or if we can do both prefix and suffix:
_vm1_replica
_vm2_replica
_vm4_replica
vm3
vm5

When it's only a list of 5 vm, it's not so bad to have them intermingled. When it's a dozen or so with different length vm names, it gets more confusing. In normal course of business, the replicas usually aren't running and we can sort by that, but then if a production machine is unexpectedly offline for some reason, it's more difficult to find/see that at a glance when sorted by that field as the down machine is hidden among the list of replicas.

Hope this explanation is clearer.

[Nas]

+1 for this replica naming.

As a team, we are now migrating to Hyper-V from VMware and faced similar issue when sorting hundreds of VM (prod and replica) as Hyper-V Manager, FCM and WAC dont have feature like vSphere search bar.