Move VMs to folders in Hosts and Clusters view?

[JimBernsteinSV]

I'm testing out Veeam Backup and Replication and have noticed that it creates replicas and adds them to the vSphere inventory with a name such as VMname_replica and things are going to start to get crowded if I do a lot of replication. Is there a way to put the replicas is a folder so they are not mixed in with the real VMs? I made a folder under VMs and Templates called Replicas where the replicated VMs are going to but they still show in the main "tree" in the Hosts and Clusters view. You can make folders in the Hosts and Clusters view but cant add individual VMs to them but only add datacenters or clusters dependig on where you make them. I'm just wondering if I'm missing something simple or what the best way is to get them out of the main view?

The built in vSphere replication doesn't put replicas in the Hosts and Clusters view.

[ch1ta]

Are you using the same host/cluster as both source and target for VB&R replication job? If so, are you doing that for specific purpose or it's more about testing process?

As to VM isolation, what about creating a resource pool and selecting it as a destination for VMs?

Cheers.

[JimBernsteinSV]

The Veeam server and Veeam proxy server are in the same cluster(s) as the VMs that are getting backed up. The storage they are backing up to is at a different site with a host and storage with a 1G dedicated connection. I have the storage setup as half NFS and half SMB just to try it both ways. I may move the proxy server there after testing if it turns out it is a better way to go.

I tried using resource pools with 0 resources but if I have to bring a replica up it complains that there are no resources to do so. Plus I always thought resource pools shouldn't be used as generic folders.

[ch1ta]

I was more interested in replication strategy, rather in a backup one. So, is the same host/cluster selected as source (place where VMs reside on) and target (place VMs should be replicated to)?

Yep, resource pools should be typically used for a different purposes. But if there is a requirement that majority of VMs should belong to the same media pool, you can kill two birds with one stone.

Anyway, if I'm not mistaken, it should be possible to create VM folder, not just cluster or datacenter ones.

Cheers.

[JimBernsteinSV]

I'm just playing with the replication at the moment but they are being replicated to the same host\cluster for the most part. But if I replicated them to a different cluster the replicas would show up there anyway and make things cluttered.

As for creating folders I can make one but it only shows up in the VMs and Templates view and I can put the powered off replicas there. The problem is even if I do that the VMs still show up in the Hosts & Clusters view and things will be getting crowded if I have a lot of them.

Like I mentioned before I can put them in a resource pool and just set the resources to 0 so it doesn't take anything away from the root cluster but I cant power the VMs on while they are in that resource pool since there are no resources available to them. When I try to failover to a replica it will power it on inside the resource pool so I would have to manually move it outside of the pool before it powered up. I'm still wondering how vSphere Replication works where it doesn't put a copy of the VM anywhere to be seen except in the datastore.

[admin]

No this is not possible. As the name describes the intended use case for that view is to manage hosts and clusters and not VMs. That is what the Virtual Machine view was intended for. The .NET client isn't getting any more features or changes added to it since a while so don't expect this to change.

We all know reality is that most people use hosts and clusters view though. Only "workaround" would be the Web Client as it simply has better filtering capabilities.

[JimBernsteinSV]

That's what I was figuring. I just wish Veeam had some other way of hiding the replicas like VMware does so they dont show up in the Hosts and Clusters view but I guess its something we will have to live with if we end up using it. Im not sure how VMware does replication compared to Veeam. I like the vSphere Replication but vDP kind of blows so that's why we are looking at Veeam.