How to Create a Scheduled Task in vCenter Server with GUI

Which Task Can I Schedule

Many sysadmins often complain doing some boring stuff on a daily basis. In vCenter Server, you can schedule tasks to run at a recurring interval such as scheduling VMware snapshot.

It saves yourself the hassle by automating some tasks through GUI. Do you know which tasks can you schedule in vCenter Server? Here are listed in the following tables.

In today’s article, we are going to introduce how to create a scheduled task in vCenter Server using GUI.

How to Create a Scheduled Task via GUI

You create scheduled tasks by using the Scheduled Task wizard. Here are the detailed steps to schedule a task in vCenter Server.

💬 Scheduling one task to run on multiple objects is not possible. For example, you cannot create one scheduled task on a host that powers on all virtual machines on that host. You must create a separate scheduled task for each virtual machine.

1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to the object for which you want to schedule a task.

2. Select Configure > Scheduled Tasks > New Scheduled Task.

3. From the New Scheduled Task drop-down menu, select the task to schedule.

The Schedule New Task wizard opens for the task with the task name appended next to the name of the wizard. The wizard contains a page where you configure the scheduling options for the task.

4. Enter the required scheduling options for the task. For example, click on Power On tab.

• Enter a name and description of the task.
• Click Change, then choose a frequency for the task.
• Select OK to complete the Configure Scheduler wizard.
• (Optional) Enter one or more email addresses to receive an email notification when the task is complete.

After a scheduled task is created, you can change the schedule, frequency, and other attributes of the task.

Schedule Virtual Machine Backups with AOMEI Cyber Backup

A scheduled backup is more secure for VM data protection than a scheduled snapshot in VMware. So this part introduces an easy-to-use tool to schedule virtual machine backup.

AOMEI Cyber Backup is a VMware backup software to run automatic VM backups securely. It offers flexible backup strategies to protect VM data seamlessly and backup VMs to different places to fulfill the 3-2-1 backup rule. With its retention policy, you can also save a lot of costs on storage.

✩ Auto Backup: Run VM backups automatically every day, every week, or every month and notified by email.
✩ Agentless Backup: Backup multiple VMs at host-level without installing agent on each VM, and use the centralized console to simplify the VM management.
✩ Restore from Any Point: With scheduled backups in hand, you can easily restore VMs to any backed up version.
✩ Support Free ESXi: AOMEI Cyber Backup supports both paid and free versions of VMware ESXi.
✩ Email notification: Send email notification when the task is completed or abnormal.

AOMEI Cyber Backup supports VMware ESXi 6.0 and later versions. You can click the following button to download the 30-day free trial.

*You can choose to install this VM backup software on either Windows or Linux system.

5 Steps to Automate VMware Virtual Machine Backups

1. Access to AOMEI Cyber Backup and add vCenter or Standalone ESXi host as the source device.

2. Create Backup Task: Navigate to Backup Task > + Create New Task, and then select VMware ESXi Backup as the Device Type.

• Task Name: you can change the task name or use the default name with an ordinal.
• Device: batch select large numbers of VMs managed by vCenter Server for centralized backup.
• Target: select to back up to a local path, or to a network path.
• Schedule: choose to perform full, differential or incremental backup, and automate execution according to the frequency you specified.

• Cleanup: automatically delete the old backup copies that exceed the retention period you specified.

3. Run Backup: Click Start Backup and select Add the schedule and start backup now, or Add the schedule only.

4. Restore from Backup: Navigate to the backup task you want to restore, click Restore to open the wizard.

Or you can click Backup Management > History Versions. Specify a VM and select a restore point from the left list.

5. Start Restore: Choose to Restore to original location or Restore to new location. And click Start Restore to recover the virtual machine in place.

▶ Restore to new location: Create a new VM in the same or another datastore/host directly from the backup to perform out-of-spacre recovery, saves the trouble of re-configuring the new VM.

Summary

This article demonstrates how to create scheduled tasks using the inbuilt task scheduler in vCenter Server. If your vCenter Server is not an option, PowerShell and PowerCLI are also available to script.

For VMware data security, you’d better choose reliable VMware backup solution instead of scheduling snapshot.