I'm considering using the vSphere tags to control which vm's to backup and what priority they should have in the backup and backup copy process. I would love to hear what people are using and what you like and don't like about tags
What tags are you using
are/how are you controlling priority (ie. which machines get backup up first, second, etc)
i use tags to define if a server is backed up or not. When the server is deployed as part of the build process you assign one of the predefined tags to the vm. Once a vm has a tag the vm will be backed up, there is no need to manually the server to a job policy from within Veeam. Veeam enumerates the tag and the new server(s) are processed, or if a server is retired, removed from backups in that case. No Tag No backups. Only issue I've run into so far is if the tags somehow disappear, get deleted etc you will find yourself recreating the tags themselves, but memeership also. Then adding the new tags to the existing jobs, as the old tags wont have same GUID or what ever vmware assigns to it. I belive there is a way to back up the tags, though.
One of the enhancements of V9 is the capability to backup and restore tags assigned to VMs. From release note:
VM tags backup and restore. VM tags are now backed up along with all of the other VM properties, and the full VM restore wizard provides a new option to restore them
Luca Dell'Oca Principal EMEA Cloud Architect @ Veeam Software
Another question. Is anyone using Tags for backups in conjunction with a backup copy? If I were to use tags to specify backup but wanted to exclude one of them from the backup copy job is it best to disable secondary target (in main job pointing to backup copy) and just use a "copy" tag as the source for a standalone copy job....or use secondary target and have a tag within the backup copy job to exclude the backup from being copied...or ????