How-to Create a Protection Job for VMs

Introduction

Expedient Service Delivery staff will perform a base configuration of a Protection Job inside the Cloud Data Protection platform. To create your own Protection Job for VMs, follow the below procedure.

Prerequisite

If the standard protection policies don’t match your needs, open a ticket with the OSC and a customized policy will be created to your specifications.

Procedure

1. Log in to the Cloud Data Protection system.
2. You should be directed to the Protection page upon logging into the cluster.
3. If you are not automatically directed to this page or are on a different page, from the navigation bar at the left of the page, select the DataProtection → Protection tab
   
   
4. In the top right corner, click the + Symbol, then select Virtual Server.
   
    
5. Select the required Source. The Source will typically be the only selection in the drop-down menu and be the EEC VCSA for your locale. If this is a dedicated cluster, this will be the name of your vCenter.
   
   
6. Select the Folder Hierarchy View () and expand the folder structure to show your VMs/Folders
   
7. Utilize the menu to select the VMs to add to the protection job
   1. Select the Auto-Protect Shield to auto-protect a folder
      1. This is the recommended protection configuration. Auto-Protect will dynamically add and remove VMs from the backup policy based on their existence in EEC or vCenter. This drastically lowers the management overhead of removing or adding backups and can protect against forgetting to start backups on a new VM.
      2. If you need to exclude a VM in a particular folder that is auto-protected, select the Auto-Protect Shield next to the VM
   2. Select the Check Box next to the VM to select the VM manually
      1. As previously mentioned, manually picking VMs for protection should be avoided. This creates a more significant management overhead for you and your team
   3. Select Add to add the VMs to the Protection Job
   4. To Exclude Disks or enable Exchange Log Truncation select the Pencil Icon next to the server.
   5. Toggle either selection based upon your use case and select Save
       
      
       Save your selection.
      
      
8. Provide a name for the Protection Job and utilize the drop-down menu to specify the Protection Policy
   1. Note that Expedient manages Protection Policies. If you need to modify a Protection Policy, please open a ticket with the OSC.
9. Utilize the drop-down menu to specify the Storage Domain. If there are multiple options, always select the one that ends in _DP to ensure you are utilizing the correct space.
10. The Additional Settings section allows you to modify additional Protection Job settings.

12. Select Protect to save your configurations.