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PowerProtect Data Manager 19.12 Administration and User Guide

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Before you create a protection policy

Consider the following best practices before creating a protection policy.

  • You can only protect an asset with one policy at a time. Protection rules do not automatically move assets that were manually added to a policy to a different policy.
    NOTE If a Microsoft SQL Server is installed on a virtual machine, you can protect the Microsoft SQL Server database with an application-consistent backup without interfering with the Microsoft SQL Server agent-based backup.
  • When creating a policy, limit the number of database assets within the policy to under 500 and stagger the start time of replication policies. These actions prevent potential replication failures.
  • Before adding replication to a protection policy, ensure that you add remote protection storage as the replication location. Add protection storage provides detailed instructions about adding remote protection storage.
  • Before scheduling weekly, monthly, or yearly backups, ensure that the PowerProtect Data Manager time zone is set to the local time zone.

Understanding backup technologies

PowerProtect Data Manager uses block-based backup technology when performing full or synthetic-full backups. The File System agent scans a volume or disk and backs up every block on the file system that is allocated to it. If only data that has changed is backed up, the block-based backup uses Changed Block Tracking.

Block-based backups support the following capabilities:

  • High-performance backups with a predictable backup window
  • Efficient backups of the deduplicated file systems used by PowerProtect DD
  • Mounting of a backup as a file system
  • Support for sparse-file backups

PowerProtect Data Manager uses traditional file-based backup technology when backing up a specific set of files or directories. During these backups, the entire directory structure of the file system is traversed. These backups take longer to complete than block-based backups.

NOTE Applying an exclusion filter to a protection policy automatically results in a file-based backup. If you are backing up a large file system, it might be more efficient to back up all the data instead. Alternatively, move the assets being filtered to a different protection policy, allowing the remaining unfiltered assets to use a block-based backup.

Understanding backup terminology and managing backup frequency

When scheduling backups in a protection policy, be aware of the following:
  • Different protection-policy types can use different terminology to describe available backup levels. This terminology can differ not only between protection-policy types, but also from traditional terminology.
  • To avoid high CPU usage that can lead to failure issues, do not schedule backups more often than recommended.

To understand the different backup levels to manage backup frequencies, see the following table.

Table 1. Backup terminology and frequency
Protection-policy types Available backup levels Description Equivalent traditional terminology Recommended minimum backup interval
VMware application-aware Full All the data is backed up. Full Monthly
Synthetic Full Only the data that has changed since the last synthetic-full or full backup is backup up. An operation to merge these changes with the last synthetic-full or full backup produces a full backup in storage. Only the changed blocks are copied over the network, but the result is still a full backup in storage. A differential backup is performed, followed by a merge operation that produces a full backup in storage. 12 hours
Log The transaction logs are backed up.   30 minutes
VMware crash-consistent Full All the data is backed up. Full Monthly
Synthetic Full Only the data that has changed since the last synthetic-full or full backup is backed up. An operation to merge these changes with the last synthetic-full or full backup produces a full backup in storage. Only the changed blocks are copied over the network, but the result is still a full backup in storage. A differential backup is performed, followed by a merge operation that produces a full backup in storage. 12 hours
Kubernetes crash-consistent Full The namespace metadata and persistent volumes are backed up. Full Daily
Synthetic Full Only the data that has changed for persistent volumes on VMware first-class disks since the last synthetic-full or full backup is backed up. The namespace metadata and all other persistent volumes are backed up in full. Although not all the data is copied over the network, the result is still a full backup in storage. A combination of full and differential backups are performed, followed by a merge operation that produces a full backup in storage. 12 Hours
File System centralized Full All the data is backed up. Full Monthly
Synthetic Full Only the data that has changed since the last synthetic-full or full backup is backed up. An operation to merge these changes with the last synthetic-full or full backup produces a full backup in storage. Only the changed blocks are copied over the network, but the result is still a full backup in storage. A differential backup is performed, followed by a merge operation that produces a full backup in storage. 12 hours
Microsoft Exchange Server centralized Full All the data is backed up. Full Weekly
Synthetic Full Only the data that has changed since the last synthetic-full or full backup is backed up. An operation to merge these changes with the last synthetic-full or full backup produces a full backup in storage. Only the changed blocks are copied over the network, but the result is still a full backup in storage. A differential backup is performed, followed by a merge operation that produces a full backup in storage. 12 hours
Microsoft SQL Server centralized Full All the data is backed up. Full Daily
Differential Only the data that has changed since the last differential backup or the last full backup if there are no other differential backups is backed up. A differential backup is performed, followed by a merge operation that produces a full backup in storage. 12 hours
Log The transaction logs are backed up.   30 minutes
Network Attached Storage Full All the data is backed up. Full Daily
NOTE It is recommended to perform a full backup after updating to PowerProtect Data Manager 19.12.
Synthetic Full Only the data that has changed since the last synthetic-full or full backup is backup up. An operation to merge these changes with the last synthetic-full or full backup produces a full backup in storage. Only the changed files are copied over the network, but the result is still a full backup in storage. An incremental backup is performed, followed by a merge operation that produces a full backup in storage. Daily
Oracle centralized Full All the data is backed up. Full Daily
Incremental Cumulative Only the data that has changed since the last level 0 full backup is backed up. Differential 12 hours
Incremental Differential Only the data that has changed since the last incremental differential backup or the last full backup if there are no other incremental differential backups is backed up. Incremental 6 hours
Log The archived logs are backed up.   30 minutes
SAP HANA centralized Full All the data is backed up. Full Daily
Differential Only the data that has changed since the last full backup is backed up. Differential 12 hours
Incremental Only the data that has changed since the last data backup. The last data backup could be an incremental, differential, or full backup. Incremental 6 hours
VMAX storage group centralized Synthetic Full Only the data that has changed since the last synthetic-full or full backup is backed up. An operation to merge these changes with the last synthetic-full or full backup produces a full backup in storage. Only the changed blocks are copied over the network, but the result is still a full backup in storage. A differential backup is performed, followed by a merge operation that produces a full backup in storage. 12 hours
NOTE In some situations, a full backup might be performed even though a synthetic-full backup was scheduled. Possible reasons for a full backup include the following:
  • There is no existing full backup.
  • The size of a volume has changed.
  • There has been a file path change.
  • The asset host has been rebooted.

The backup frequency of log, differential, incremental-cumulative, incremental-differential, and incremental backups cannot be greater than the backup frequency of either full or synthetic-full backups. If you attempt to add or edit a protection policy that uses an invalid backup frequency, PowerProtect Data Manager prevents you from saving the protection policy. You can increase the backup frequency of a protection poicy by scheduling more full or synthetic-full backups with different retention times to meet your requirements.

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