About selecting virtual machines by means of multiple policies
If your virtual environment has many virtual machines with inconsistent naming conventions, you may need multiple policies working in tandem. It may be difficult to create a single policy that automatically selects all the virtual machines that you want to back up.
For this situation, configure several policies so that each policy backs up a portion of the environment. One policy backs up a particular set or group of virtual machines, such as those that have host names. A second policy backs up a different group of virtual machines that were not backed up by the first policy, and so forth. When all the policies have run, all the virtual machines are backed up.
The following table describes the policies that are designed to back up the virtual environment in three phases. Note that each policy relies on a different setting for the Primary VM identifier parameter.
Table: Three policies that back up the virtual machines in phases
Policy | Query builder rules | Backup result |
|---|---|---|
First policy Primary VM identifier parameter: VM hostname | Notes IsSet | This policy backs up all virtual machines that have a host name and any Notes. Any virtual machines that do not have a host name and do not have Notes are either excluded from the backup or listed as FAILED. |
Second policy Primary VM identifier parameter: VM display name | NOT Notes IsSet AND IsClustered Equal 'TRUE' | This policy backs up all virtual machines that have a display name, that are clustered, and that do not have any Notes. Any virtual machines that have Notes but are not clustered are excluded from the backup. |
Third policy Primary VM identifier parameter: VM GUID | NOT Notes IsSet AND IsClustered NotEqual 'TRUE' | This policy backs up the virtual machines that were not backed up by the first two policies. This policy selects the virtual machines that do not have any Notes and are not clustered, but that do have a GUID. |
More information is available on the Primary VM identifier parameter and its effect on virtual machine selection.
See Effect of Primary VM identifier parameter on Selection column in Test Query results.