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Manage protection group settings

 

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

You can modify a number of protection group settings.

  • Add or remove members to or from the protection group—Add servers, computers and workloads to the group.

  • Exclude data sources from a protection group— You can exclude specific file data sources from application and file data in a protection group. For example, if data doesn’t change or is out-of-date.

  • Modify storage settings—Modify settings for short-term storage, online protection to Azure, and long-term tape storage.

  • Consistency checks—Specify how replicated data should be checked for consistency

  • Allocated disk space—Modify the disk space that’s allocated to data in the protection group..

  • Initial replication—Configure how initial replication of data added or removed in the protection group should be handled, using either over the network or manually offline.

  • Online backup—Modify Azure Backup settings. Note that you can’t configure an existing protection group to do initial replication to Azure using offline replication. You can only configure this setting for new protection groups.

Before you modify protection group settings note the following:

  • If you add a data source that contains a reparse point (for example mount points and junction points), you’ll need to indicate whether you want to include the target of the reparse point in the protection group. The reparse point itself is not replicated; you’ll need to manually recreate the reparse point when you recover the data.

  • We recommend that you exclude system volumes and program folders from protection as a volume or share. Protecting a volume that contains system files and program folders doesn’t enable you to restore the operating system or state of a computer. To restore the state of a computer, you must select the computer's system state as the protected data source.

Modify protection group settings

  1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Protection on the navigation bar. Select the protection group and click Modify to open the Modify Group Wizard. You can also click Add online protection if this isn’t set up.

  2. If you clicked Modify you can edit the following settings in the wizard:

    1. On the Select Group Members page, you can add or remove data sources in the protection group. You can also exclude folders from protection and exclude file types by specifying a file name extension.

      If you delete a data source from a protection group, its status will show as Inactive Replica Available. To remove inactive protection select the group member and click Remove inactive protection on the tool bar Select whether you want to delete the replica on disk or expire the recovery points on tape. The tapes are not marked free until all other data on the tapes is expired.

    2. On the Select Data Protection Method page, you can modify short and long-term data storage settings for the protection group; and rename the protection group. If you want to do a short-term back up to Azure in addition to disk, click Add Online Protection. For more information on setting up storage options, see Set up data backup storage.

    3. On the Specify Short-Term Protection Policy page, you can change the retention range for short-term storage, the synchronization and replication frequency settings and the recovery point schedule

    4. If you added new members to the protection group or changed the short-term protection method from disk to tape, the Review Disk Allocation page appears. On this page, you can change the current disk allocations for the protection group

    5. If you added long-term tape-based protection, the Specify Long-Term Protection Policy page displays. On this page, you can modify the retention range, backup frequency, and backup schedule for long-term storage. You can also specify a name for the tape label. The Select Tape and Library Details page also appears. On this page you can specify the tape and library to be used for back up of this protection group. You can also specify whether to compress or encrypt the backup data.

    6. On the Specify Advanced Options page you can click Optimize Performance to modify performance options including data compression, synchronization start time, and a consistency check schedule

  3. If you clicked Add Online Protection do the following in the Specify Online Protection Data wizard:

    1. In Specify online protection data select the data sources you want to back up to Azure

    2. In Specify online backup schedule specify how often you want to take a backup from the disk backup to Azure. A recovery point is created each time a backup is taken.

    3. In Specify online retention policy specify how long you want to retain DPM data in Azure.

      You can read more about backing up DPM to Azure in Back up DPM workloads with Azure Backup.