Part 9: Exporting & Importing Policies with vRealize Operations Manager 6.0

With the release of vRealize Operations Manager 6.0, VMware has introduced a much required feature into the product which allows you export policies created in your vROps 6.0 instance and import them back into the system as and when you need them.

This feature was in constant demand with vCOps 5.x, however was never possible with that version. Their could be multiple use cases for which you might want to export or import policies. Some that come to my mind are Backup & Restore, distributing policies across multiple instances within an organization, programmatically make changes to policies and injecting them back into the system and many more. The export and import options are right on the GUI itself which makes it even more simpler.

Let us quickly dive into my lab through screenshots and see how you can do this:

• Login to and node of vROps 6.0 cluster deployment. (If you have a standalone deployment then that's the node you want to login to. Remote collectors do not have these policies hence do not login to them, instead chose a Master, Master Replica or a data node. Please use credentials with appropriate permissions.

• Click on the Administration Icon and click on Policies.          

• Click on the Policy Library and then select the policy which you wish to export and click on the Tool icon highlighted in the screenshot and click on EXPORT. This can be saved as an XML file and later imported back when you need it.

If you are curious, open the xml file and you will notice that the entire policy can be edited in the xml format and then imported back into the same system. I can see Alan Renouf writing scripts against the policy engine to customize the policy from 3rd part tools and interfaces. With his experience and creativity may be has some more great ideas.

You can just import the xml using the same options and it will give you the policy back into your vROps instance. Please ensure that you enable the policy by attaching it to a group or the entire universe. Once you do that, the policy would be reflected under the Active Policies. Here you can rank the policies just like the old vROps days. Rank 1 will have a higher priority while the default policy will have a rank of D. Look at the screenshot here which shows a policy I have just made active:

With this I will close this article and hopefully this gives you an insight on how you can play around with policies on vROps 6.0. See you soon with my next post!

Till Then...



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