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Exclude VMware components from monitoring

Use regex overrides on the discovery rules to include or exclude VMware components.

Applies to: OpsLogix VMware Management Pack (all versions) · SCOM 2019, 2022, 2025 · vCenter 7.0, 8.0, 9.0
Last updated: October 2026 · Reading time: 4 minutes

Goal

Leave VMware objects out of SCOM, or discover only the objects you need, by overriding the filter parameters of the VMware discoveries.

First consider license assignment. The simplest way to stop monitoring an ESXi host completely is to remove its license on the Assign tab of VMware MP Configuration. Only licensed hosts are discovered. See Assign VMware MP licenses to ESXi hosts. Use the discovery filters below for finer control, for example to leave out test VMs or local datastores.

Which discoveries you can filter

Each discovery filters only its own objects. Excluding a host doesn't exclude the VMs that run on it, and excluding a cluster doesn't exclude its hosts.

Discovery Default filter field Other fields you can filter on
VMware Datacenter discovery ObjectName ParentFolderPath
VMware Cluster discovery ObjectName  
VMware ESX Host discovery ObjectName HaCParentPath, DnsName, Manufacturer, Model, ServiceTag, AssetTag, SerialNumber, BuildVersion, InCluster
VMware Virtual Machine discovery ObjectName HaCParentPath, guest.guestFullName, guest.hostName, runtime.powerState, summary.config.template, summary.config.annotation, Tags
VMware Virtual Machine snapshot discovery ObjectName Description, State, VirtualMachineName
VMware Datastore discovery ObjectName DatastoreURL
VMware Network discovery ObjectName  
VMware Distributed Virtual Switch ObjectName  
VMware Resource Pool discovery ObjectName  
VMware Host Service discovery label (the service name shown in vSphere) ObjectName, running, policy
VMware Host Disk Volume discovery ObjectName  

The vSAN and Appliance Monitoring management packs have the same filter parameters on their discoveries. The hardware discoveries don't; use small set or full set to control them.

Field names are case-sensitive. ObjectName is the display name of the object in SCOM.

How the filter works

Each discovery has three override parameters:

Parameter Default What it does
IncludePropertyField ObjectName (Host Service: label) The field that the two expressions are matched against.
IncludePropertyValue (.*) A regular expression. Only objects that match are discovered.
ExcludePropertyValue ^()$ A regular expression. Objects that match aren't discovered, even if they match IncludePropertyValue.

An object is discovered when the field matches IncludePropertyValue and doesn't match ExcludePropertyValue. The expressions match anywhere in the value: (Target1) also matches Target10 and MyTarget1. Use ^ and $ to match the whole value.

What you want Parameter Value
Discover everything (default) IncludePropertyValue
ExcludePropertyValue		 (.*)
^()$
Discover only objects whose name starts with PRD- IncludePropertyValue ^PRD-
Discover everything except Target1 ExcludePropertyValue ^Target1$
Discover everything except Target1 and Target2 ExcludePropertyValue ^(Target1|Target2)$
Don't discover VM templates IncludePropertyField
ExcludePropertyValue		 summary.config.template
(?i)^true$

Prerequisites

  • Permission to create overrides, and an unsealed management pack to save them in.
  • Basic knowledge of regular expressions.

Steps

  1. In the Operations console, go to Authoring > Management Pack Objects > Object Discoveries and search for the discovery, for example VMware Virtual Machine discovery.
  2. Right-click the discovery and select Overrides > Override the Object Discovery. Choose For all objects of class to filter everywhere. Many VMware discoveries target the datacenter; for those you can also choose For a specific object of class to filter in one datacenter only.
  3. Override IncludePropertyValue and/or ExcludePropertyValue. If you filter on another field, also override IncludePropertyField.
  4. Select your override management pack and click OK.

Don't override PropertyPaths or Interval unless OpsLogix support asks you to. The discoveries share one data collection per vCenter (cookdown); different values break it and increase the load on SCOM and vCenter.

Verify it worked

The filter is applied at the next run of the discovery, about every 6 hours. Objects that no longer pass the filter are then removed from SCOM, together with their health state, alerts and performance data. See How long does VMware discovery take?

See also