What Is a Protection Group?

  • Article

Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

A protection group is a collection of data sources, such as volumes, shares, or Exchange Server storage groups, which 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 encapsulates the data backup targets (disk or tape ), the protection schedule that specifies how often to synchronize the replica with the live data on the protected computer and when to create recovery points of the replica and the performance options that you want to enable such as on-the-wire compression and daily consistency checks.

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.

To help you in designing a storage layout for DPM, you can use a Storage Calculator that focuses on outlining the storage capacity requirements based on a set of input factors. For more information, see Storage Calculators for DPM (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=180658).

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 SP2

Storage group
  • Storage group

  • Database

  • Mailbox

Exchange Server 2010

Exchange database
  • Database

  • Mailbox
  • SQL Server 2000 with Service Pack 4 (SP4)

  • SQL Server 2005 SP1, SP2, SP3

  • SQL Server 2008

  • SQL Server 2008 SP1
  • Database
  • Database

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007
  • Farm

  • Search Shared Services Provider (SSP)
  • Farm

  • Database

  • Site Collection

  • Site

  • File

  • List or document library

  • List item

  • Search Shared Services Provider (SSP)

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  • Farm

  • SharePoint Search
  • Farm

  • Database

  • Site Collection

  • Site

  • File

  • List or document library

  • List item

  • SharePoint Search
  • Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010

  • Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010

Farm
  • Farm

  • Database

  • Site Collection

  • Site

  • File

  • List or document library

  • List item

Note

Granular recoveries can be performed without a recovery farm.
  • Windows Server 2003

  • Windows Storage Server 2003

  • Windows Server 2008 (Standard and Enterprise editions)

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 (Standard and Enterprise editions)
  • 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

Microsoft Hyper-V in x64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008 R2

Virtual machines on the following deployments of Hyper-V:

  • Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)

  • Highly available virtual machines on a failover cluster

  • Stand-alone hosts

  • Windows Server/Server Core and Microsoft Hyper-V Server & Local Data Source Protection
  • Virtual machines

  • Item level recovery (granular recovery of files, folders, volumes, and virtual hard disks (VHDs) from a host-level backup of Hyper-V virtual machines to a network share or a volume on a DPM protected server).

Microsoft Hyper-V in x64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008

Virtual machines on the following deployments of Hyper-V:

  • Stand-alone hosts

  • Windows Server/Server Core and Microsoft Hyper-V Server & Local Data Source Protection

  • Shared disk cluster
  • Virtual machines

  • Item level recovery (granular recovery of files, folders, volumes, and virtual hard disks (VHDs) from a host-level backup of Hyper-V virtual machines to a network share or a volume on a DPM protected server).

Client computers –desktops and laptops running:

  • Windows XP Professional SP2

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

  • Windows 7
  • File data
  • File data

Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) for computers that are running Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003

Note

To perform BMR operations on computers that are running Windows Server 2003, install DPM System Recovery Tool (SRT)

BMR

BMR and System State

System State for computers that are running Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003

System State

System State

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 (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=179370).

See Also

Concepts

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