What Is a Protection Group?

  • Article

Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

A protection group is a collection of data sources, such as volumes, shares, or Exchange Server mailboxes, that have a common protection configuration. Data sources within a protection group are referred to as protection group members or simply members. The protection group configuration specifies the performance options that you want to enable, such as on-the-wire compression and daily consistency checks. The protection policy specifies how often to synchronize the replica with the live data on the protected computer and when to create recovery points of the replica.

Some of the factors you should consider when deciding how to organize your data into protection groups are the business requirements of your organization, network performance, and the characteristics of the data. Consider, for example, how often the data changes, how rapidly the data size increases, and how critical it is to be able to recover a very recent copy of lost data. You might also want to consider how frequently you need to back up the data to tape, which data needs to be encrypted or compressed, and the number of backup copies you need available. In most cases, you will want to group data with similar characteristics together.

The following table shows the data sources that Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) protects and the level of data that you can recover using DPM.

Product Protectable Data Recoverable Data
  • Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 (SP2)

  • Exchange Server 2007 Beta 2
  • Storage group
  • Storage group

  • Database

  • Mailbox
  • SQL Server 2000 with Service Pack 4

  • SQL Server 2005 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
  • Database
  • Database
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

  • Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  • Farm
  • Farm

  • Database

  • Site

  • File or list
  • Windows Server 2003

  • Windows Storage Server 2003
  • Volume

  • Share

  • Folder
  • Volume

  • Share

  • Folder

  • File
  • Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
  • Virtual server host configuration

  • Virtual machines

  • Data for applications running in virtual machines
  • Virtual server host configuration

  • Virtual machines

  • Data for applications running in virtual machines
  • Workstations running Windows XP Professional SP2

  • Windows Vista editions except Home (must be member of a domain)
  • File data
  • File data

After a data source is added to a protection group, the data source is described as a member of the group. Before you can start protecting data, you must create at least one protection group. For more information about protection groups, see "Planning Protection Groups" in the DPM 2007 Planning Guide (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=73647).

See Also

Concepts

What Is a Consistency Check?
What Is a Recovery Point?
What Is a Replica?
What Is Synchronization?