Automation Central job to delete old snapshots is not removing snapshots from the expected set of VMs

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)
• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

• A VCF Operations (previously Aria Operations) Automation Central job to remove 3 day old snapshots is not working correctly.  
• Attempting to configure a job to ignore VMs that have a specific tag or tag category:
• For example:
  • tag category='Snapshot Retention' with tag value='Snapshot Retention'
  • or tag category='Snapshots'   with tag value:'Snapshot Retention' 
  • This is expected to eliminate all VMs or only wants to delete the VMs with the tag.
• The /storage/log/vcops/log/analytics-[uuid].log contains entries like
  

  [com.vmware.vcops.analytics.action.schedule.ActionScheduler.launchAction] - There are no VMs to run under the custom job

 

Environment

VMware Aria Operations 8.x

VCF Operations 9.0.x

Cause

The logic for the criteria sets is incorrect.

Resolution

Tip: Use the Preview Scope button to verify the Filter Criteria is defined correctly.

Option 1 - verify a specific tag category does not exist on the VM

Example: Delete aged snapshots unless the VM has a tag category of snapshot-no-delete

• Define the 3 - Filter Criteria with a single criteria set with the following values:
  
  

  Tag     snapshot-no-delete     not exists

   

 

Option 2 - verify a specific tag value does not exist on the VM

Example: Delete aged snapshots unless the VM does not have a tag value of snapshot-no-delete in the tag category called lifecycle

• Define the 3 - Filter Criteria with multiple criteria sets using the +ADD ANOTHER CRITERIA SET button to create OR logic between them
  
  

  Tag     lifecycle     is not     snapshot-no-delete
  OR
  Tag     lifecycle     not exists

  Note: VMs that do not have a tag with the tag category of lifecycle will not match the first test
  
  

Option 3 - use multiple criteria in a single criteria set with AND logic

Example: Delete snapshots older than 3 days on all VMs that do not have the Snapshot Retention or Snapshots tag categories

• Define the 3 - Filter Criteria with a single criteria set using the +ADD button to create AND logic between the tests
  
  

  Properties     Disk Space|Snapshot|Age (Days)     is greater than     3.0
  AND
  Tag     Snapshot Retention     not exists
  AND
  Tag     Snapshots     not exists

   

Additional Information

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