Start a Conversation

Unsolved

D

1 Rookie

 • 

3 Posts

23

June 30th, 2025 17:29

Export members of Networker group that is based on dynamic rule

Is there a way to export members of Networker group that is based on dynamic rule? Dynamic rule is based on Virtual Machine names.

Networker version 19.13.0.0.Build.15

I understand that each time I export members - the result might be different, since new VMs may be added, old ones deleted, or VMs name can be modified. And I still need the way to export.

1 Rookie

 • 

3 Posts

June 30th, 2025 17:33

I need to export both VMs that are backed up and the exclusions.

4 Operator

 • 

1.3K Posts

July 1st, 2025 10:30

@dimon08756 
Well, just get the llist of total VM's from vSphere.

You can just get the list of all the VM's backuped up using the mminfo command, the difference is the filtered VM's.
May I ask what are you trying to accomplish and somehere could suggest a better plan to you.

2 Intern

 • 

191 Posts

July 15th, 2025 08:09

you would need to compare the networker rule created, which would state the rule(s) used as a selection and compare it to the configuration on VCenter end.

If you prefer to have more of different kind of control, you might better use tags on VC end, as then you could say that any VM that uses a specific tag, that matches a dynamic rule stated in the protection group of a workflow, should result in a backup.

That is the thing with the dynamic approach, you can only see the result after the fact. The only exception that you can run a preview in NMC (and I assume NWUI) to show which vm's the rule would now apply to. Sadly there still does not seem to be a cli option for that, as then you could run the preview and save its output to a file, as that would show for the workflow, which vm's it finds that match the set dynamic rule.

We as backup team leave it up to the admins to sort out if indeed the system to be protected is indeed protected, as it would be up to them to use and set the agreed upon tags to make sure a new vm ends up in the appropriate workflow, while also giving full control to them by removing the tag, as step to decommission a vm.

All pretty much self-service and responsibility of the OS/virtualization team, where the backup team "only" provides the pre-defined backup policies and agreed upon dynamic rules (which can be very flexible as we also use it to determine the location of a VM if that is mentioned for example in the storage path to correctly correlate it to the appropriate pool if the admins don't want to use a very specific tag (or even multiple tags as the sky is the limit) but rather a generic one).

Using VC tags I'd prefer anytime over doing dynamic selection based on vm names as that puts responsibility there with the ones actually needing the vm to be protected to begin with.

No Events found!

Top