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PowerProtect Data Manager 19.11 File System User Guide

About the PowerProtect agent service

The PowerProtect agent service is a REST API based service that is installed by the application agent on the application host. The agent service provides services and APIs for discovery, protection, restore, instant access, and other related operations. The PowerProtect Data Manager uses the agent service to provide integrated data protection for the application assets.

This section uses <agent_service_installation_location> to represent the PowerProtect agent service installation directory. By default, the agent service installation location is C:\Program Files\DPSAPPS\AgentService on Windows and /opt/dpsapps/agentsvc on Linux. All files that are referenced in this section are the relative paths to the agent service installation location.

The PowerProtect agent service performs the following operations:

  • Addon detection—An addon integrates the application agent into the agent service. The agent service automatically detects the addons on the system for each application asset type and notifies the PowerProtect Data Manager. While multiple addons can operate with different asset types, only one agent service runs on the application host. Specific asset types can coexist on the same application host.
  • Discovery—The agent service discovers both stand-alone and clustered file system assets on PowerProtect Data Manager hosts, as well as their backup copies. After an initial discovery when the agent service discovers new assets and backup copies, the agent service notifies PowerProtect Data Manager.
  • Self-service configuration—The agent service can configure the application agent for self-service operations by using information that is provided by the PowerProtect Data Manager. When you add an asset to a protection policy for self-service or centralized protection, or modify the protection policy, including changing the DD Boost credentials, the PowerProtect Data Manager automatically pushes the protection configuration to the agents.
  • Centralized backups—The agent service performs the centralized backups as requested by the PowerProtect Data Manager.
  • Centralized restores—The agent service performs the centralized restores as requested by the PowerProtect Data Manager.

    NOTE In the current release, the centralized restores are only available for the File System agent, Microsoft SQL agent, and Storage Direct agent.
  • Backup deletion and catalog cleanup—The PowerProtect Data Manager deletes the backup files directly from the protection storage when a backup expires or an explicit delete request is received. The PowerProtect Data Manager goes through the agent service to delete the catalog entries from the agent's local datastore.

    NOTE The manual deletion of backup copies is not recommended. PowerProtect Data Manager automatically deletes expired backup copies as needed.

The agent service is started during the agent installation by the installer. The agent service runs in the background as a service and you do not interact with it directly.

The config.yml file contains the configuration information for the agent service, including several parameter settings that you can change within the file. The config.yml file is located in the <agent_service_installation_location> directory.

The agent service periodically starts subprocesses to perform the discovery jobs. You can see the type and frequency of these jobs in the jobs: section of the config.yml file. The job interval unit is minutes.

The agent service maintains a datastore in the <agent_service_installation_location>/dbs/v1 directory, which contains information about the application system, assets, and backups discovered on the system. The size of the datastore files depends on the number of applications and copies on the host. The agent service periodically creates a backup of its datastore in the <agent_service_installation_location>/dbs/v1/backups directory, as used to recover the datastore if this datastore is lost.

NOTE The size of each datastore backup is the same as the datastore itself. By default, a backup is created every hour. To save space on the file system, you can reduce this datastore backup frequency for large datastores. By default, the datastore backup is retained for one week. You can change the datastore backup frequency, retention period, and backup location in the config.yml file.

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