Protection groups are collections of data sources (also known as workloads) that have a common protection configuration. Members of a protection group share the following:
- Backup targets (disk, tape, or Microsoft Azure)
- Protection schedule
- Recovery point schedule
- Performance options (compression and consistency checks)
To create a protection group, perform the following steps:
1. In the Protection workspace of the DPM console, click New.
2. On the Select Protection Group Type page of the Create New Protection Group Wizard, shown in Figure 1, select Servers. You can also configure DPM to protect clients.
FIGURE 1 Servers protection group
3. On the Select Group Members page, specify which data you want to protect. For example, Figure 2 shows the selection of an online Hyper-V virtual machine named Live-Hyper-V-VM. When configuring protection group members, you specify what you will protect, from individual files and folders, through to VMs, databases, and even entire servers.
FIGURE 2 Select Group Members
4. On the Select Data Protection Method page, provide a protection group name, and then specify the protection methods. You can choose to have short-term protection using Disk, online protection using Microsoft Azure, and long-term protection using tape. The Azure and Tape options are only available if they have previously been configured. Figure 3 shows the selection of short-term protection using Disk.
FIGURE 3 Select Data Protection Method
5. On the Specify Short Term Goals page, select the Retention Range and how often an Express Full Backup is taken.Figure 4 shows recovery points created every half an hour with a Retention Range of 3 days.
FIGURE 4 Select short-term goals
6. The Review Disk Allocation page allows you to view the allocation of storage in the storage pool. You also have the option to grow volumes as required. Figure 5 shows the Review Disk Allocation page.
FIGURE 5 Review Disk Allocation
7. On the Choose Replica Creation Method page, select how the first replica should be created. Options include creating the replica immediately, creating the replica at a scheduled point in the future, or creating a replica manually using removable media.
8. On the Consistency Check Options page, shown in Figure 6, configure how often a consistency check is run to verify the integrity of the protected data.
FIGURE 6 Consistency check options
9. Complete the wizard to finish creating the new protection group. Figure 7 shows the protection group that protects the online VM with an OK protection state.
FIGURE 7 Protection workspace
