PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance 5.16.0.0 Network-Attached Storage User Guide

File Filters

File Filters enable you to include or exclude specific files and folders from an asset that are based on the filter conditions.

Earlier versions of PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance had exclusion filter with four conditions (file size, file type, file modified date, and folder path). These four conditions could in turn be a combination of four clauses that were supported.

The latest version of PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance is enhanced with new inclusion filter capability with six conditions (file size, file type, file modified time, file path, file/folder name, and file creation time). The inclusion filter allows you to include subset of files from the assets that are being backed-up. The exclusion clause further trims this selection by excluding files from the subset of files, selected by the inclusion clause. For both include and exclude clauses, the number of conditions has been increased to six, along with the additional operators that can be used with these conditions to specify a subset of files to be backed up within the selected assets.

For more information about supported conditions and operators, see Supported conditions and operators in File Filters

The new file filter capability supports two levels of nested filter clauses. Each filter can have up to 10 clauses with an additional 10 for nested conditions. Include and exclude clauses can both be present in one filter to fine-tune the files that are being backed-up.

You can create the filters that allow PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance to exclude or include subset of files from the assets being backed-up. You can define a new exclusion or inclusion filter on the File Filters page. Use the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance UI to add, edit, and delete filter for files and folders.

For more information about using File Filters, see Add File Filters

When you create or edit a protection policy, you can apply filters to the following asset types:

• Network Attached Storage (NAS)
• File Systems

When you apply a filter to a protection policy, by default PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance uses the file-based backup technology. File-based backups traverse through the entire directory structure to back up the subset of files defined by the filter conditions. Inclusion and Exclusion filters allow you to tune your backups so that a specific subset of files are chosen for backup, but they take longer than block-based backups to complete.

For more information about using File Filters for NAS and File Systems, see PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance Network-Attached Storage User Guide and PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance File System User Guide.