Preview Backup Job VM Selection

[gjg_allegis]

Anyone know of a way to see the actual list of VMs that would be selected when setting up a backup job, before the backup job actually runs? I'm trying to setup a job that only backs up VM templates and it's saying it would be about 36TB of data, but that is way too high. I suspect there might be a problem with the exclusion settings in the job, so I would like to see the list of VMs being selected without running the job.

[Mildur]

Hi

How have you added the templates to the backup job? One by one, a tag or a folder?

Best,
Fabian

[gjg_allegis]

For this job, the VM selection points to a particular ESX host cluster, and then there is a bunch of exclusions based on tags and folders. The intention is to catch any VMs (templates and newly provisioned ones) that aren't specifically included in another backup job. I was hoping I could look through a log that would show the VM names selected after it showed the capacity number when setting up the job. It's not a big deal, I'm just used to having the preview option after working with other backup software.

[DChiavari]

With some great help by @oleg.feoktistov I was able to put together the following script, re-using some code I wrote years ago for another project...

What the script does:

• Get the objects / containers in the job's selection list (hosts, clusters, VMs, whatever)
• Find all VMs inside those objects
• List them in a table, along with their path/location, provisioned and used size

Code: Select all

#Specify the source job
$source_job = Get-VBRJob -Name "YOUR_JOB_NAME"

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "Processing job: $($source_job.Name)"`n

#Get the objects in the job's selection list
$source_job_objects = Get-VBRJobObject -Job $source_job

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Cyan "List of containers and items in the job selection list (count: $($source_job_objects.Count)): "
$source_job_objects | ft -Property Name, TypeDisplayName -AutoSize

#Initialize the array that will contain the VMs found in the job
$found_vms=@()

    #Cycle through each object and based on its type (VM/Host, Datacenter, Cluster, Host, Folder, Tag, etc.) find the VMs inside
    ForEach ($jobObject in $source_job_objects) {
                        
        Switch ($jobObject.TypeDisplayName) {
            {'Virtual Machine' -contains $_} {
                $found_vms += Find-VBRViEntity -Name $jobObject.Name
                }

            {'Host', 'Datacenter', 'Cluster' -contains $_} {
                $found_vms += Find-VBRViEntity | ? {($_.Path -like "$($jobObject.Location)*") -and ($_.Type -eq 'Vm')}
                }

            {'Folder', 'Template' -contains $_} {
                $found_vms += Find-VBRViEntity -VMsAndTemplates | ? {($_.Path -like "$($jobObject.Location)*") -and ($_.Type -eq 'Vm')}
                }
            
            {'Datastore', 'Datastore Cluster' -contains $_} {
                $found_vms += Find-VBRViEntity -DatastoresAndVMs | ? {($_.Path -like "$($jobObject.Location)*") -and ($_.Type -eq 'Vm')}
                }

            {'Tag', 'Tag Category' -contains $_} {
                $found_vms += Find-VBRViEntity -Tags | ? {($_.Path -like "$($jobObject.Location)*") -and ($_.Type -eq 'Vm')}
                }
        }
    }

    Write-Host -ForegroundColor Cyan "List of VMs found in the job (count: $($found_vms.Count)): "

    $found_vms| ft Name, Type, Path, @{n="Provisioned GB";e={[math]::Round($_.ProvisionedSize/1GB,0)}}, @{n="Used GB";e={[math]::Round($_.UsedSize/1GB,0)}} -AutoSize

Sample output:

[gjg_allegis]

I ran the script and it did the trick. Not only that but it's a great example of using Find-VBRViEntity. Thank you so much, this is very helpful.