Tag associations are part of the metadata of the virtual machine. NetBackup considers virtual machine tag association protection a best effort backup. Any tag collection errors are shown in the Activity Monitor for the virtual machine snapshot jobs.

If for any reason NetBackup is unable to back up tag associations, the job completes successfully with a NetBackup Status Code 0. Any failures to retrieve tag associations in the backup are, however, reported in the job details in the Activity Monitor.

vCenter Server 6.0 or later is required.

VMware tag associations are only backed up when you use VMware Intelligent Policies.

NetBackup backs up tag associations with virtual machines. NetBackup does not back up tag associations with other vCenter Server objects, such as datastores or folders.

Tag associations for all virtual machines are retrieved during the discovery job. The tag associations are, however, stored in the backup image for each individual virtual machine. Be aware there is a time difference between the discovery job time and the backup job. If tag associations are changed between these times, the changes are not backed up.

For tag backup to work correctly, the servers that are listed must be at NetBackup version 7.7.3 or later:

Master server, media server, discovery host, and the backup host.

For tag associations to restore correctly, the master server and the recovery host must be at NetBackup 7.7.3 or later.

Backup and restore of tag associations requires the NetBackup Java Runtime Environment (JRE) be installed on the discovery host and the recovery host.

If tag associations of a virtual machine were successfully backed up, then NetBackup attempts to recreate tag associations with the restored virtual machine. If the recovery host version is incompatible, NetBackup completes the recovery of the virtual machine and sets the job status to 0. The recovery job details, however, provide information on the failure to recreate the tag associations.

If tag associations of a virtual machine were not backed up successfully, then NetBackup does not attempt to recreate tag associations with the restored Virtual Machine. NetBackup completes the recovery of the virtual machine and sets the job status to 0. The recovery job details provide information on the failure to collect the tag associations that occurred at the time of backup.

When Replication Director for VMware is used to protect your virtual machines, tag associations are backed up only when Application Consistent protection is enabled. When Application Consistent protection is disabled, NetBackup does not protect tag associations.