Inheritance of data protection settings
IBM Spectrum Protect™ data protection settings, or tags, can be inherited, or passed down, from a higher-level parent inventory object in the vSphere Web Client navigator.
When you assign a data protection tag to an inventory object in the vSphere Web Client, the child objects inherit the same data protection tag as the parent inventory object that the tag was assigned to.
- Datacenter
- Folder (Host and Cluster folders and VM and Template folders)
- Host
- Host cluster
- Resource pool
- Virtual machine
For example, if you assign the Excluded tag to a host cluster, the child objects of the host cluster object (host, host folder, and virtual machine) all inherit the Excluded tag. In this example, all virtual machines that are within the host cluster are excluded from scheduled backups.
If a child object is assigned a tag and inherits tags in the same category, the assigned tag of the child object overrides the inherited tag. If a child object inherits tags in the same category from multiple ancestor objects, the tag that is inherited from the nearest ancestor overrides tags from other ancestors.
If no data protection tags are assigned in the vSphere inventory hierarchy, the system default tag settings are applied. For information about the supported tags and any default tag settings, see Supported data protection tags.
Order of precedence for inheritance
Depending on the object (target object) that you are trying to assign a data protection tag to, a precedence exists for determining the distance from the target object to its ancestors during processing of tag inheritance from multiple ancestors. The following table contains target objects and the possible ancestors of each target object type, based on the hierarchy of objects that is presented in the vSphere Web Client Navigator.
| Target object | Order of precedence of tags processed |
|---|---|
| Virtual machine | Target virtual machine → Nested VM folders → Nested resource pools → Host → Host cluster → Nested host folders → Datacenter |
| VM folder | Target VM folder → Other nested VM folders → Datacenter |
| Host folder | Target host folder → Other nested host folders → Datacenter |
| Resource pool | Target resource pool → Other nested resource pool → Nested VM folders → Host → Host cluster → Nested host folders → Datacenter |
| Host | Target host → Nested host folders → Cluster → Datacenter |
| Cluster | Target cluster → Nested host folders → Datacenter |
| Datacenter | Target datacenter |
If the target object is a virtual machine, the virtual machine itself, and any combinations of its ancestors (including VM folders, resource pools, host, host cluster, host folders, datacenter) can be assigned tags from the same category. During processing, each object type is checked in the order of precedence, and processing stops when a tag in the same category is found or the end of the list is reached.
For example, to determine whether the Excluded or Included tag Backup Management (IBM Spectrum Protect) is applied to virtual machines, IBM Spectrum Protect searches for the Excluded and Included tags in the inventory in a datacenter. According to the order of precedence for the virtual machine target object, the search for the Excluded and Included tags starts from the target object (virtual machine) itself, followed by the list of potential ancestors. If a tag is found before the end of the list is reached, this tag is applied to the target object. Otherwise, no tag from the Backup Management (IBM Spectrum Protect) category is applied to the target virtual machine.