Create and manage protection groups

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 SP1 - Data Protection Manager, System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

Before you can create a protection group to protect a resource, verify the following:

1. Verify that DPM is installed and deployed correctly. If it isn’t see:

   • System requirements

   • DPM protection support matrix

   • Supported and unsupported scenarios in DPM

   • Install DPM

2. Check that you have storage set up. If you haven’t read more about your options in

   • Read about short-term storage to disk and storage pools, see Plan for disk backups

   • For storage to Azure with Azure Backup, see Plan for Azure backups

   • For long-term storage to tape, Plan for tape-based backups

3. Set up the DPM protection agent on the computer or server you want to protect. For details see Set up the protection agent.

4. Then create a protection group that contains the resources want to protect.

You specify that you want to backup data for computers and servers by running the Create New Protection Group wizard. The wizard is standard, but does include a couple of additional pages for workloads such as Exchange. Create a protection group as follows:

1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Protection on the navigation bar.

2. In the Actions pane, click Create protection group. Review the Welcome page, and then click Next.

3. On the Select Protection Group Type page, select the Servers or Clients, You only select clients if you want to back up data on a Windows computer running a Windows client operating system. For all other workloads select server. You can find a list of all workloads that DPM protects in the DPM protection support matrix.

4. On the Select Group Members page, select all the resources you want to protect.

5. On the Select Data Protection Method page, specify a protection group name.

   Select I want short-term protection using Disk and select I want online protection if you want to back up data to Azure using the Azure Backup service. If this option isn’t available complete the wizard to create the group and then modify the protection group settings to select this option. You can store data in Azure for up to 3360 days.

   If you have a standalone tape or tape library connected to the DPM server you’ll be able to select I want long-term protection using tape.

6. If you’re configuring Exchange protection a couple of Exchange-specific pages appear in the wizard:

   • On the Specify Exchange Protection Options page, select Run Eseutil to check data integrity to check the integrity of the Exchange Server databases. This moves the backup consistency checking from the Exchange Server to the DPM server which means the I/O impact of running Eseutil.exe on the Exchange Server during the backup itself is eliminated. To protect a DAG, be sure that you select Run for log files only (Recommended for DAG servers). If you did not previously copy the .eseutil file as described in Prerequisitesan error will occur.

   • On the Specify Exchange DAG Protection page, select the databases you want to copy for either a full backup or copy backup from the Database copies selected for Full Backup or Database copies selected for Copy Backup list boxes. For protecting multiple copies of the same database, you can select only one copy for full backup, and then select the remaining copies for copy backup.

7. On the Specify Short-Term Goals page, in Retention range, specify how long you want to retain disk data. In Synchronization frequency specify how often incremental backups of the data should run. Alternatively, instead of selecting an interval for incremental backups you can enable Just before a recovery point. With this setting enabled DPM will run an express full back just before each scheduled recovery point.

   If you’re protecting application workloads, recovery points are create in accordance with Synchronization frequency if the application supports incremental backups. If it doesn’t then DPM runs an express full backup instead of incremental, and creates recovery points in accordance with the express backup schedule that you can configure.

8. If you enable long-term storage to tape, on Specify Long-Term Goals page, in Retention range, specify how long you want to keep your tape data (1-99 years).

   In Frequency of backup select the backup frequency that you want. The backup frequency is based on the specified retention range, as shown in the following list:

   • When the retention range is 1–99 years, you can select backups to occur daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly.

   • When the retention range is 1–11 months, you can select backups to occur daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.

   • When the retention range is 1–4 weeks, you can select backups to occur daily or weekly.

   On a stand-alone tape drive, for a single protection group, DPM uses the same tape for daily backups until there is insufficient space on the tape. You can also Colocate data from different protection groups on tape.

9. If you configured long-term storage to tape, on the Select Tape and Library Details page, specify the tape and library that’ll be used for back up of this protection group. You can also specify whether to compress or encrypt the backup data.

10. On the Review Disk Allocation page recommended disk allocations are displayed. Recommendations are based on the retention range, the type of workload and the size of the protected data.

    • Data size—Size of data in protection group.

    • Disk space—The amount of disk space DPM recommends for allocation to the protection group. If you want to modify this setting you should allocate total space that’s slightly larger than the amount you estimate that each data source will grow.

    • Colocate data—If you enable colocation multiple data sources in the protection group can map to a single replica and recovery point volume. Colocation isn’t supported for all workloads.

    • Automatically grow—If you enable this setting, if data in the protected group outgrows the initial allocations, DPM will try to automatically increase the disk size by 25%

    • Storage pool details—Shows the current status of the storage pool, including total and remaining disk size.

11. On the Choose Replica Creation Method page, specify how the initial replication of data in the protection group will be performed. If you select to replicate over the network we recommended you choose an off-peak time. For large amounts of data or less than optimal network conditions, consider replicating the data offline using removable media.

12. On the Consistency Check Options page, select how you want to automate consistency checks. You can enable a check to run only when replica data becomes inconsistent, or according to a schedule. If you don’t want to configure automatic consistency checking, you can run a manual check at any time by right-clicking the protection group in the Protection area of the DPM console, and selecting Perform Consistency Check.

13. On the Summary page verify the settings and click Create Group.

    DPM performs the initial replication. The protection group status is displayed on the Status page. If initial replication completes successfully an OK status will be shown.

To delete a protection group, you stop protecting it and then delete it.

1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Protection on the navigation bar.

2. In the display pane, select the protection group to stop protecting.

3. In the Actions pane, click Stop protection of group. The Stop Protection dialog box appears.

4. Choose whether to retain or delete protected data:

   1. Click Retain protected data to retain the replica on disk with associated recovery points and tapes for the retention range.

   2. Click Delete protected data to delete the replica on disk and expire the recovery points on tapes.

5. Click Stop Protection. Data sources within the protection group are no longer protected, and DPM deletes the protection group.