PowerProtect Data Manager 19.11 Virtual Machine User Guide

Protection rules

Protection rules comprise one or more conditions that select matching assets and automatically assign them to a corresponding protection policy. PowerProtect Data Manager applies these rules to assets at discovery time.

When you define a protection rule, note the following requirements:

• Creating protection rules requires at least one existing protection policy.
• An asset can only belong to one protection policy.
• Assets can move from one policy to another policy based on the priorities of the protection rules.
• Virtual machine tags created in the vSphere Client can only be applied to a protection rule.
• To ensure the protection of homogeneous assets, the protection rule must specify a storage asset type.
• A virtual machine application-aware protection policy that protects a Microsoft SQL Server Always On availability group (AAG) must include all the virtual machines of the AAG in the same protection group. Failure to meet this requirement might result in Microsoft SQL Server transaction log backups being skipped. Ensure that the protection rules are designed to include all the AAG virtual machines.

You can manually move an asset into a protection policy and override automatic placement through protection rules. Manual assignment protects the asset through the specified policy but protection rules no longer apply to that asset. To apply protection rules again, remove the asset from the protection policy.