Plan for protection group recovery settings

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 SP1 - Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 - Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

In DPM you collect data sources you want to backup into protection groups. When you configure a protection group, you define its recovery settings:

• Retention range— Specifies how long you want to keep backed up data.

• Synchronization—Specifies how often the backed up replica data should be synchronized with the source data. This will be a function of your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) which measures the maximum amount of data loss (measured in time) that is acceptable to your business. You can set the synchronization frequency between 15 minutes and 24 hours. You can also select to synchronize just before a recovery point is created, rather than on a specified time schedule. At a minimum, DPM must synchronize the replicas for a protection group at least once between recovery points. Obviously if your data has a low RPO you should synchronize frequently.

• Recovery point schedule— Specifies how many recovery points should be created for a protection group. If you’re protecting file data, you’ll select the days and times at which recovery points should be crated. If you’re protecting workloads that support incremental backups, the synchronization frequency determines the recovery point schedule. When protecting workloads that don’t support incremental backups, the express full backup schedule determines the recovery point schedule.