Distributing VMs over BMC PATROL Agents

In vCenter Server environments with more than 3,000 virtual machines per VMware hypervisor, you can improve performance by distributing the virtual machines over the BMC PATROL Agents.

In BMC ProactiveNet version 8.6.02, the following limitations apply:

• Each BMC PATROL Agent can have up to 3,000 devices associated with it.
• Each data collection host can have up to 10,000 devices associated with it.

The installation process adds BMC PATROL Agents to the BMC ProactiveNet Data Collection Host. To distribute devices over several agents, you can create filters for virtual machines. First, you need to add the agent host names to the PATROL Configuration Manager, and then, you associate filters with each BMC PATROL Agent.

Use the following procedures to distribute virtual machines by filtering clusters, hosts, or virtual machines.

To associate virtual machine filters with a BMC PATROL Agent

1. On the left pane of the PATROL Configuration Manager, right-click a BMC PATROL Agent name and select Configuration > Get.
2. After successful completion of the GET action in the Job Status Information window, click OK.
3. On the right pane, expand the folder RuleSets > PCM > backup > hostName and locate the following rules:
   • FilterClusters
   • FilterHosts
   • FilterVMS
     
4. Right-click the rule with the filter condition that you want — clusters, hosts, or VMs — and select Edit Rule.
5. In the RuleSet window, click Edit Value.
6. Replace the regular expression .* with a regular expression that matches your environment.
    At the end of the expression, add a space and then an inclusion or exclusion indicator:
   • 1 indicates an inclusive filter. All matches to the regular expression are associated with the agent.
   • 2 indicates and exclusion filter. All matches to the regular expression are not associated with the agent. The regular expression ESX-CL010[0-9] 1 includes all clusters with the name ESX-CL0100, EXESX-CL0101,... ESX-CL0109.See BMC PATROL for Virtual Servers Getting Started Guide for further details about rule definitions.
      Click OK to close the RuleSet window.
7. Drag the rule set from the right pane to the host name on the left pane and click Apply Configuration .
8. In the Apply RuleSets window, confirm the following settings and click OK:
   • Clear Purge Agents Before Apply
   • Select Backup Agents Before Apply
9. After successful completion of the APPLY action in the Job Status Information window, click OK.
10. Save and close the PATROL Configuration Manager.

Related Topics

BMC-ProactiveNet-Data-Collection-Host-installation