Feature Request: VMware Tagging - JOIN statements

[ekisner]

I would like the ability to more flexibly create dynamic jobs.

Consider a scenario where one has 2 different tag categories: RPO (tags: 4h, 24h) and Encryption (tags: true, false). One could simply create a single category with all 4 combinations, but then if you wanted all 4h RPO VMs, you must search for 4h RPO & encryption TRUE as well as 4h RPO & encryption FALSE. It complicates things in the future by restricting the flexible nature of tagging.

One could easily add more categories, such as "App-Aware", "Compression Level", really imagination is the limit (okay so the hard limit is probably specific to the number of job setting permutations, but that's pretty high).

Theoretically, with those 2 categories, one must create 4 jobs. One must manually exclude VMs that do not belong in a specific job, for example if you're targeting your jobs based on the RPO, you must manually exclude the VMs which requre or do not require encryption, one for each of your 4h RPO jobs.

Consider, however, the ease of using something like an inner join. All VMs which are a member of group 1 and group 2 (...and 3, and 4.... so on and so on). Or a left join: All VMs which are a member of group 1 but not group 2. You still have the same number of jobs, but now nothing is manual. As soon as you update the tag, the job accurately reflects the change as well.

[Gostev]

Thanks for your feedback, we will consider this for the future releases.

[soggy]

Just chiming in this would be an immensely useful feature. As I require to have multiple tags for various things such as retention,encryption,offsiting,etc
In the meantime I'll have to write something in powershell and run it as a scheduled task to update objects across the backup jobs.

[mj71]

I ran across the Veeam whitepaper Using Veeam and VMware vSphere Tags for Advanced Policy-driven Data Protection and thought it would be a nice way to streamline our jobs. The paper discusses creating tags for VM Purpose, RPO and Encryption. I implemented these tags in VMware and tagged all of our VMs accordingly. I was disappointed to find that there is no way to combine tags when selecting VMs to backup. Only a single flag is evaluated.

I'd like to be able to create a backup job that selects VMs that are, for example, Windows VM AND RPO-Daily AND No encryption.

Thanks!

[Vitaliy S.]

Thanks for the post, your FR is noted.

[cjack03]

I ran across the Veeam whitepaper Using Veeam and VMware vSphere Tags for Advanced Policy-driven Data Protection and thought it would be a nice way to streamline our jobs. The paper discusses creating tags for VM Purpose, RPO and Encryption. I implemented these tags in VMware and tagged all of our VMs accordingly. I was disappointed to find that there is no way to combine tags when selecting VMs to backup. Only a single flag is evaluated.

I'd like to be able to create a backup job that selects VMs that are, for example, Windows VM AND RPO-Daily AND No encryption.

Thanks!

Hi!

We do that already, below is an example of what we do, not the most elegant solution but it works for us:

WHEN Tag("OSGroup") = "Windows Servers" AND Tag("AppQuiescence") = "AppAwareYES" AND Tag("BackupRPO") = "BRPO24" THEN "24H AppAware Windows Servers"

[Fred_vBrain]

Hi all,

this thread is little bit old but I would like to +1 this feature request. Currently one of my TAM customers had also challenges for their backups because they are running local site SAN VMs and Remote mirrored VMs in the same cluster. Some of these VMs geht backuped with Hot-Add and some only with NBD because there is only one proxy per cluster. Either the proxy is running on site A which sees only local storage A then site B VM on site B storage can only be backuped with NBD. If I could combine multiple tags I could create 2 Proxies and could bind the backup jobs to these tags. At the moment only one tag is possible and I would need to create a script similar to that what cjack03 did in his previous post.

Thanks.
Cheers,
Fred

[smichel]

Hello,

+1 for me too.
The multi tag with AND / OR conditions will be really a good new feature.

Thanks a lot

Stéphane

[kev_147]

Just wanted to revive this thread as this will reduce so much admin overhead if you could define an AND when defining the scope of Veeam Jobs

[Gostev]

This feature is high on our priority list by now.

[Sven M.]

It would be fantastic if we can have this asap...

[lidaza]

Hello,

+1 for me too.

[blaise.david]

Hello,

Can't wait for this FR, it would also be nice to be able to dynamically group VM by different Tags & vCenter Containers as well (ie: VM folders)

+1

[GregorS]

Chiming in, +1. When can we expect this to be implemented, specifically Tag1 AND Tag2? Update 4, Update NEXT, VBR v10?

[foggy]

As far as I know, this is not a part of Update 4.

[rockaut]

Hello fellow Veeameans,

shortly before christmas i wanted to deploy a small wishlist for whoever brings those presents to well-behaved tech peoples.

We currently managing most of our vSphere environment structured in VM folders lined up for Veeam Jobs. Recently we started to use vSphere tags instead so we can use those folders for better. But with tags we saw some issues or at least some downsides.

1. currently it's not possible to control the backup job with multiple tags
For example:

• VM1 - multiple Tags: Job_A, IgnoreVSS, IndexAll

• VM2 - multiple Tags: Job_A, ReqVSS, IndexNone

• VM3 - multiple Tags: Job_B, ReqVSS, IndexNone

I think it's selfspeaking what should be done. It's just not possible today. Instead of this we have created multiple Tags for each Job:

• JobA_ignoreVSS_IndexAll

• JobA_ignoreVSS_IndexNone

• JobA_ReqVSS_IndexAll

• JobA_ReqVSS_IndexNone

• JobB_ignoreVSS_IndexAll

• JobB_ignoreVSS_IndexNone

• JobB_ReqVSS_IndexAll

• JobB_ReqVSS_IndexNone

Same and same again for around 35 Jobs distributed over multiple vCenters and B&R Servers *hmpf*. Building some sort of IF-THEN-ELSE-AND-OR relationship would be cool.

If some of your great techs need more insight we're more than willing to help develop and test such a feature!

Best regards,
Markus

[rockaut]

In some kind of connection to post307569.html#p307569 ...

As stated in other thread we are transfering our structure toward a more tag driven vm order. Nonetheless we wanted to use VM folders for tenant structuring. Also pinning the Job credentials on those tenant folders while using tags for the job inclusion. Sounds great! ... it just don't work.

Currently it seams that if you include a VM with a vSphere tag into a job you can't pin the credential on a vm folder. You have to use an tenant_tag or pin it on the vm itself. That's kind of stupid to be true and really contradicts the easynes of veeam itself.

I'm not sure if this behaviour is wanted or just overlooked or even a bug? Again, we're totally willing to input some more insight here.


Markus

[foggy]

Hi Markus, thanks for detailed feedback. Better tags support is on our list.

[Ollo]

Same problem here.

It should be also possible to use tags in the vm "Exclusions" panel. Then you can make tags like "NoBackup".
Scenario: Backup all VMs in Cluster "X" excludet VMs with tag "NoBackup"

[foggy]

Agree. Thanks for the feedback.

[Virtuollie]

+1 for adding a feature to combine VMware tags for a more flexible and dynamic way to manage the content of backup jobs!

[Gostev]

Good news, v11 has this feature!

[Virtuollie]

That is really great news, thanks for letting us know, Gostev!