Browse for VMware Virtual Machines screen

Use this screen to select a vCenter server (VirtualCenter), ESX server, or individual virtual machines. You can enter the host name manually or browse and select from a list.

Enter the VM hostname

Click this option if you want to manually enter the name of a virtual machine. The format of the name depends on your system. It may be the fully qualified name or another name, depending on your network configuration and how the name is defined in the guest OS. If NetBackup cannot find the name you enter, policy validation fails.

To enter a host name, make sure that Browse and select Virtual Machine is not selected.
Browse and select Virtual Machine

Click this option to discover vCenter servers, datacenters, and ESX servers (shown in the left pane). You can select virtual machines from a list (in the right pane).

The virtual machines that are contained in a VMware vApp are displayed in the right pane along with other virtual machines. The vApp however is not shown in the left pane.

The virtual machine names that are listed may be derived from a cache file. Use of the cache file is faster than rediscovering the virtual machines on the network if your site has a large number of virtual machines.

If NetBackup cannot obtain the IP address of the virtual machine, the host name and IP address are displayed as NONE.

Note that virtual machine host names or display names must be unique within a master server's policies:
Last Update

To update the cache file and re-display virtual machines, click the refresh icon to the right of the Last Update field. This field shows the date and time of the most recent cache file that contains the names of virtual machines.
For NetBackup to access the virtual machines, note the following:
- For older virtual machines, VMware VCB must be installed on the VMware backup host.
- The NetBackup master server must have credentials for the VMware VirtualCenter or ESX server(s).
- DNS problems may prevent or slow down discovery of the virtual machines.
- To limit the search to particular vCenter or ESX servers, you can create a BACKUP registry entry as an exclude list. Excluding unneeded servers can dramatically speed up the search for virtual machines.
- The browsing timeout value must not be set too low.

VM Host Name, Display Name, UUID, etc.

When you select an ESX server in the left pane, information about its virtual machines appears in columns in the right pane. You can change the settings and arrangement of these columns by right-clicking on any of the column headers.

The columns are the following:

VM Host Name	The host name of the virtual machine.
Display Name	The display name of the virtual machine.
UUID	The UUID of the virtual machine.
IP Address	The IP address of the virtual machine.
OS	The guest OS system as defined when the virtual machine was created.
Data Store	The datastore where the virtual machine configuration files are stored.
Power	The power on/off status of the virtual machine when it was last discovered.
RDM Status	Shows whether the virtual machine has a physical disk in raw device mapping mode (RDM) or has an independent drive.
Platform	The VMware release version of the virtual machine (vmx-04 or vmx-07).
Discovered Timestamp	The time and date at which the virtual machine's UUID was initially discovered and cached.
Change Tracking Support	Shows whether the virtual machine supports the VMware Changed Block Tracking feature (for BLIB). Changed Block Tracking requires ESX server 4.0 and a virtual machine at vmx-07 or later.
ESX Host	The ESX server in which the virtual machine resides (also appears in the left pane).
Data Center	The datacenter that contains the virtual machine (also appears in the left pane).
Virtual Center Name	The vCenter server that manages the ESX server (also appears in the left pane).

The virtual machines you selected are listed in the Clients tab.