Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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squebel
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Inclusions vs exclusions

Post by squebel »

Hello,

One thing that is quite frustrating and hard to config around is that some configurations only allow for Excluding items and then other configurations only allow for Including items. And all of these are static at the time you set up the job and don't allow for pattern matching for future job runs.

Example 1) Excluding disks from a backup is actually an Inclusion of specific disks and it means that if you add a disk later to that vm, you will not get a backup of that disk unless you remember to go edit the job and then Include that new disk. That is hard to deal with when you manage hundreds of jobs across dozens of environments. It would make a lot more sense to be able to select the disks you do NOT want to backup instead.

Example 2) Setting up exclusions on jobs is static. Filtering out certain vm's from a job only works based on the inventory at the time you set up the exclusion. That means that if there is anything that gets added later that you don't want in that job, you have to go exclude that server.

I understand that there are ways to write scripts and stuff like that but that just becomes another thing someone has to manage and make sure works. It would be nice if the filtering and options for inclusions/exclusions were a bit more granular with more options.
PTide
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Re: Inclusions vs exclusions

Post by PTide »

Hi,

Yep, all of that makes sense.

Speaking of #2 - how do you usually add VMs? Do you add containers, or tags, or specify VMs explicitly?

Thanks!
squebel
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Re: Inclusions vs exclusions

Post by squebel »

We're about 99% tag based but there are situations where we might point to something like a resource pool, folder, or cluster instead.

The backup copy job limitation in v12 where you can't point the BCJ to an infrastructure item (vm) any more brings this to light even more. If I want to point a BCJ to a repository but only want it to get a single vm out of there, I can tell it to exclude all items in there except for the one I want but that is static and could literally change before the scheduled job runs.

I'd say Example 1 is the biggest mess for us in most cases.
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