Creating tag based custom groups in vROPS

vCenter tags are a great way of categorizing your VM in vCenter and it will allow you to all kinds of wonderful things on the reporting front. You can search the vCenter inventory based on tags or you could use them with PowerCLI for your reporting needs. Tags also integrate with other VMware products and one of these is vROPS.

One of the things I use tags for is to create custom groups in vROPS. Custom groups will allow me to group all VM in a service and saves me from remembering the VM name and searching the vROPS inventory.

I assume you know how to create vCenter tags but in case you don't here is how you can go about it:

• Select VM and right click. Select Tags and Custom attributes
• Click assign tag
• Click the tag with green plus sign
• Enter name and select a category. 
• Select the service and click OK

In vROPS, undertake the following steps

• Go to Environment > Groups and Applications > Custom Groups
• Click Green plus sign.
• Enter name and set policy to environment.
• Check "Keep group membership up to date"
• Set object type to vCenter Adapter | Virtual Machine
• Select Properties and Summary|vSphere Tag. Specify "is" from 3rd dropdown box
• Select your tag
• Click OK
  
  
  

You will now notice that your custom group is available which you can use for monitoring purposes and the likes.

If you happen to find that you cannot select your tags in vROPS then ensure that the credentials you use for your collector has read-only permissions at a global level.