PowerProtect Data Manager 19.13 File System User Guide

Add a protection policy for centralized File System protection

With centralized protection, PowerProtect Data Manager manages all aspects of the protection process. The process of adding a protection policy is similar for all policy types. However, these instructions contain only elements and options that appear when you select the centralized protection policy type.

1. Select Protection > Protection Policies.
   The Protection Policy window appears.
2. Click Add.
   The Add Policy window appears.
3. In the Type page, specify the new protection policies group fields. For example, if you are creating a protection policy for daily backups in the Windows server:
   1. In the Name field, specify the name of the protection policy. For example, File System Prod.
   2. In the Description field, specify a short description of the protection policy. For example, File System Prod Daily Backups
   3. In the Type field, select File System.
   4. Click Next.
      The Purpose page appears.
4. To manage all protection centrally, click Centralized Protection.
5. Click Next.
   The Assets page appears.
6. Select the unprotected assets that you want to add to the backup of this protection policy group. The window enables you to filter by asset name to locate the required assets.
   You can use to switch between a list view of all assets discovered by PowerProtect Data Manager and a hierarchical view to display the assets in a tree structure underneath each host. A hierarchical view can be helpful if you have added multiple file systems and need to more easily identify which assets belong to which host.
7. Click Next.
   The File Exclusions page appears.
8. Optionally, to enable exclusions, click Enable.
   1. Select one or more filters to apply, provide the parameters, and click Add Filter.

      Click Add a saved filter to use an existing filter or group of filters as a template.

      NOTE: Add an exclusion filter provides more details about exclusion filters.
   2. Enter a name and description for the filter and click Save.

      The Objectives page appears.

9. On the Objectives page, select a policy-level Service Level Agreement (SLA) from the Set Policy Level SLA list, or select Add to open the Add Service Level Agreement wizard and create a policy-level SLA.
   The PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides instructions.
10. Click Add under Primary Backup.
    The Add Primary Backup dialog appears.
11. On the Schedules pane of the Add Primary Backup dialog:
    1. Specify the following fields to schedule the synthetic full backup of this protection policy:
       • Create a Synthetic Full...—Specify how often to create a synthetic full backup. A synthetic full backup copies only the changed data since the last backup to create a new full backup.
       • Retain For—Specify the retention period for the synthetic full backup.
       • Start and End—The activity window. Specify a time of day to start the synthetic full backup, and a time of day after which backups cannot be started.
         NOTE: Any backups started before the End Time occurs continue until completion.
       • Click Save to save and collapse the backup schedule.
    2. Click Add Backup if you want to periodically force a full (level 0) backup, and then specify the following fields to schedule the full backup of this protection policy:
       NOTE: When you select this option, the backup chain is reset.

       • Create a Full...—Specify whether you want to create an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly full backup.
       • Repeat on— Depending on the frequency of the full backup schedule, specify the hour of the day, day of the week, or the date of the month that the full backup occurs.
       • Retain For—
         CAUTION: The retention period of synthetic full backups must be less than or equal to the retention period of full backup copies. If you set a shorter retention period for a synthetic full backup than for the corresponding full backup, then data loss might occur and you might be unable to recover the point-in-time copies.
         By default, the retention period for the full backup is the same as that for the synthetic full backup. You can, however, specify a retention period for the full backup that is longer than the retention period for the synthetic full backup.
       • Start and End—The activity window. Specify a time of day to start the full backup, and a time of day after which backups cannot be started.
         NOTE: Any backups started before the End Time occurs continue until completion.
       • Click Save to save and collapse the backup schedule.
    3. Click Add Backup and repeat the procedure for creating full backups if you want to create additional backup copies at different intervals with different retention periods.
       Within this protection policy, when a full schedule conflicts with another full backup schedule, a message appears, indicating that there is a conflict. Schedule occurrences can conflict with each other when the activity windows are identical or occur entirely within the same time range. To avoid full schedule conflicts in a policy, edit the activity windows.

       If you proceed with conflicting schedules, the backup of the lower priority schedule will be skipped. Schedule priority is ranked according to the following criteria:

       • Full schedules have a higher priority than Synthetic Full schedules.
       • For schedules of the same backup type, the schedules that run less frequently have a higher priority than schedules that run more frequently.
       • For schedules with the same backup type and frequency, the schedule with the longest activity window has the higher priority. If the activity windows are also identical, only one of these schedules will run.

       NOTE: When a schedule conflict between full backups occurs, PowerProtect Data Manager runs the full backup with the longest retention period.
12. On the Target pane of the Add Primary Backup dialog, specify the following fields:
    1. Storage Name—Select a backup destination from the list of existing protection storage systems, or select Add to add protection storage and complete the details in the Storage Target window.
       NOTE: The Space field indicates the total amount of space, and the percentage of available space, on the protection storage system.
    2. Storage Unit—Select New if this protection policy should use a new storage unit on the selected protection storage system, or select an existing storage unit from the list. Hover over a storage unit to view the full name and statistics for available capacity and total capacity, for example, testvmpolicy-ppdm-daily-123ab (300 GB/1 TB)
       When you select New, a new storage unit in the format policy namehost nameunique identifier is created at policy completion. For example, testvmpolicy-ppdm-daily-123cd.
    3. Network Interface—Select a network interface from the list, if applicable.
    4. Retention Lock—Move the Retention Lock slider to the right to enable retention locking for these backups.
       The retention lock mode setting comes from the configuration of the selected storage unit. When you enable retention locking, the Retention Lock Mode field displays the corresponding storage unit setting.

       Setting a retention lock applies to the current backup copy only, and does not impact the retention lock setting for existing backup copies.

       NOTE: Primary backups are assigned a default retention lock period of 14 days. Replicated backups, however, are not assigned a default retention lock period. If you enable Retention Lock for a replicated backup, ensure that you set the Retain for field in the Add Replication dialog to a minimum number of 14 days so that the replicated backup does not expire before the primary backup.
    5. SLA—From the list, select an existing service level agreement that you want to apply to this objective, or select Add to create an SLA within the Add Service Level Agreement wizard.
       The PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides instructions.
13. Click Save to save your changes and return to the Objectives page.

    The Objectives page updates to display the name and location of the target storage system under Primary Backup.

    After completing the objective, you can change any details by clicking Edit next to the objective.

14. Optionally, replicate the backups:
    NOTE:

    To enable replication, ensure that you add remote protection storage as the replication location. The PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides detailed instructions about adding remote protection storage.

    When creating multiple replicas for the same protection policy, it is recommended to select a different storage system for each copy. If you select a storage unit that is the target of another objective for the same policy, the UI issues a warning. The PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides information about replicating to shared protection storage to support PowerProtect Cyber Recovery. Verify the storage targets and the use case before you continue.

    When you create a replication objective, you can specify either scheduled replication or replication after backup completion.

    NOTE: For replication after backup completion, it is recommended that you update the application agents to the latest version. To ensure that replication occurs immediately after the centralized primary backups complete, update all application agents to PowerProtect Data Manager version 19.11 or later. If you want to replicate only specific backups, perform a manual replication of these backups in advance.
    1. Click Replicate next to Primary Backup. An entry for Replicate is created to the right of the primary backup objective.
    2. Under Replicate, click Add.
       The Add Replication dialog appears, with information in the left pane for each schedule that has been added for the primary backup objective of this protection policy.

       NOTE: Backups for all of the listed schedules will be replicated. You cannot select individual schedules for replication.
    3. Select a storage target:
       • Storage Name—Select a destination from the list of protection storage. Or, select Add to add a protection storage system and complete the details in the Storage Target window.
       • Storage Unit—Select an existing storage unit on the protection storage system. Or, select New to automatically create a storage unit.
       • Network Interface—Select a network interface from the list, if applicable.

       • Retention Lock—Move the Retention Lock slider to the right to enable retention locking for these replicas.

         The retention lock mode setting comes from the configuration of the selected storage unit. When you enable retention locking, the Retention Lock Mode field displays the corresponding storage unit setting.

       • SLA—Select an existing replication service level agreement that you want to apply to this schedule from the list. Or, select Add to create a replication SLA within the Add Service Level Agreement wizard.

       The PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides more information about replication targets, such as SLAs.

    4. Select when to replicate the backups:

       File System replication triggers provides more information.

       • To replicate after the backup finishes, move the Replicate immediately upon backup completion slider to on.

       • For scheduled replication, move the Replicate immediately upon backup completion slider to off, and then complete the schedule details in the Add Replication dialog.

         For replication of the primary backup, the schedule frequency can be every day, week, month, or x hours.

         For daily, weekly, and monthly schedules, the numeric value cannot be modified. For hourly, however, you can edit the numeric value. For example, if you set Create a Full backup every 4 hours, you can set a value of anywhere from 1 to 12 hours.

       By default, all replicas of the primary backup objective inherit the retention period from the Retain For value of the synthetic full and full backup schedules.

    5. To specify a different retention period for individual synthetic full and full replicas, clear Set the same retention time for all replicated copies, click Edit in the row of each schedule that you want to change, update the value in the Retain For field, and then click Save.
       CAUTION: Setting a retention period for the replicas of other backup types (such as log backups, incremental, and differential backups, where applicable) that is shorter than the retention period of the corresponding full backup may result in being unable to recover from those replicas.
    6. Click Save to save your changes and return to the Objectives page.
15. Optionally, to move backups from protection storage to Cloud Tier, add a Cloud objective for the primary or replication objective:
    NOTE: To move a backup or replica to Cloud Tier, objectives must have a retention time of 14 days or more. PowerProtect Data Manager also requires the discovery of protection storage with a configured Cloud unit.
    1. Click Cloud Tier next to Primary Backup. Or, if adding a Cloud objective for a replication objective that you have added, click Cloud Tier under Replicate.
       An entry for Cloud Tier is created to the right of the primary backup objective, or below the replication objective.
    2. Under the entry for Cloud Tier, click Add.
       The Add Cloud Tier Backup dialog appears, with summary information for the parent objective to indicate whether you are adding this Cloud Tierobjective for the primary backup objective or the replication objective.
    3. Keep the All applicable full backups slider to the right if you want to tier the backups from all of the full primary backup or replication schedules of this policy. Otherwise, move the slider to the left and select the full schedule(s) that you want to tier.
       NOTE: If the retention period of a schedule is less than the minimum 14 days required before tiering occurs, or is less than the value in the Tier After field, you can still select this schedule for tiering. However, if you do not edit the retention period of this schedule or its backup or replication copy to a value greater than the Tier After field before the retention period of the copy expires, the backup or replication copy of this schedule will not be cloud tiered.
    4. Complete the objective details in the Add Cloud Tier Backup dialog, and then click Save to save your changes and return to the Objectives page.
       The PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides detailed instructions for adding a Cloud objective for a primary or replication objective.
16. Click Next.
    The Options page appears.
17. On the Options page, select the additional option if required for the policy:
    • Enable indexing for file search and restore — Select this to perform search on the backups.
    • Troubleshooting — Select this option to enable the debug logs for troubleshooting at higher debug levels. To override the default debug level, add the statement debugLevel=<N> to the addOn.cfg configuration file, where N is the desired debug level, in the range [4..9].
      NOTE: Overriding the bug level in this manner may result in larger logs that may slow backup operations.

      In Windows environments, the impacted logs include:

      • FSAgentInstallPath\logs\vsscr.log
      • FSAgentInstallPath\logs\nsriscsi.log
      • FSAgentInstallPath\logs\nsriscsi_***.log
      • FSAgentInstallPath\logs\nsrwriter.log
      • FSAgentInstallPath\logs\ddfscon.***.log
      • FSAgentInstallPath\logs\ddfscon_***.log
      • FSAgentInstallPath\logs\ddfssv.log
      • FSAgentInstallPath\logs\ddfssv_***.log
      • FSAgentInstallPath\logs\ddfsrc_***.log

      In Linux environments, the impacted logs include:

      • /opt/dpsapps/fsagent/logs/nsriscsi.log
      • /opt/dpsapps/fsagent/logs/ddfscon.***.log
      • /opt/dpsapps/fsagent/logs/ddfssv.log

    NOTE: If you have updated from an earlier File System agent version, some log files may appear with both .log and .raw extensions. Use the .log files.
18. Click Next.
    The Summary page appears.
19. Review the protection policy group configuration details. You can click Edit next to any completed window's details to change any information. When completed, click Finish.
    An informational message appears to confirm that PowerProtect Data Manager has saved the protection policy.

    When the new protection policy is created and assets are added to the protection policy, PowerProtect Data Manager performs backups according to the backup schedule.

20. Click OK to exit the window, or click Go to Jobs to open the Jobs window to monitor the backup of the new protection policy group.
    Upon requesting a backup (file-based or block-based), the status of the protection policy becomes Queued. This status switches to Running only after the system begins writing the backup to protection storage.