Creating a Protected Group for Local File Systems

Prerequisites

• At least one production site has been created.
• Hosts or host groups and storage devices for host applications have been added to the production site.

Context

The protected objects belonging to one protected group reside on the same storage device.

Procedure

1. In the menu bar, Choose Protection.
2. Click Create.
3. Select a protected object.
   1. Set Production Site and Production Host(Group).
   2. Select the file systems that you want to protect.

4. Click Next.
5. Set a protection policy.
   1. On the Protection Policy page, the system automatically matches supported protection policies. Select a protection policy based on your data protection solution.

      When the synchronous Clone (SAN) DR technology is used, select Clone:Backup protection solution.

      

      • If there are suitable protection policies, you can select a protection policy based on your data protection solution and modify the time policy of the protection policy.
      • If there is no suitable protection policy, check whether the storage devices used by protected objects have been configured as planned. If the storage devices have not been configured, configure them as planned. After configuration, perform the following operations: On the menu bar, select Resources. Select a node under the management server. In the site node, click Storage, in the line where the storage device resides, click Refresh to refresh the storage device information under the site. Then, recreate the protected group.
   2. Click Set to set the protection policy for the protected group.
      1. In the Quick Backup area of the Protection Policy, click Set to set the protection policy for the protected group.
      2. Click the Enable Quick Backup and select the Scheduling Policy tab. In the Time Policy area, set the time policy for the protected group. Table 1 lists related parameters.

         

         Table 1 Time policies

         Time Policy	Description
         On-demand scheduling	Manually starts protection tasks.
         Period-based scheduling	Automatically starts protection tasks based on a period set by the system. NOTE: To ensure data consistency, the execution timetable for a protected group policy template must be set. You are advised to set the execution time to off-peak hours. Tasks can be executed at multiple time points of a day, a week, or a month. Alternatively, at a specific time segment of a day, a week, or a month with a fixed frequency. It is recommended that the starting time of the validate period is set to a time later than the completion of the initial synchronization. If daylight saving time (DST) is enabled on the eReplication management server, a DR protection task whose trigger time point falls within the DST shift period cannot be executed at the scheduled time. Details are as follows: (UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (United States and Canada) is used as an example. The DST starts at 2016-03-12 02:00:00, and ends at 2016-11-06 02:00:00. If the start time of the protection policy falls within the first hour (2016-03-12 02:00:00 to 03:00:00) after the DST starts, for example, 2016-03-12 02:30:00, the protection group will be automatically executed with a delay of one hour, that is 2016-03-12 03:30:00. If the start time of the protection policy falls with the last hour (2016-11-06 01:00:00 to 02:00:00) before the DST ends, for example, 2016-11-06 01:30:00, the protection group will be executed after the DST ends for half an hour.

      3. When the Scheduling Policy is set to Period-based scheduling, in the Expected RPO area, if you select Enable PRO Requirement Satisfaction Check, the actual RPO is check against the configured RPO. If the actual RPO exceeds the expected RPO, the system generates an alarm, indicating that the RPO requirement is not satisfied.

         

         Expected RPO can be set to 0-31 days, 0-23 hours, and 5-59 minutes.

         

         If days and hours are not set, the Expected RPO is 15 minutes by default.

      4. Click the Reservation Policy tab. Set Latest duplicate and the duplicate retention policy. Table 2 describes related parameters.

         

         Table 2 Retention policies

         Retention Policy	Description
         Latest duplicate	The number of duplicates cannot exceed the maximum number of snapshots that can be taken for a storage resource such as a LUN or file system.
         Duplicate retention	The duplicate retention policy defines the retention policy of duplicates generated during the protected group protection. When the system starts duplicate maintenance, expired and invalid duplicates will be deleted based on the duplicate retention policy. By default, the time to maintain duplicates is the 39th minute of every hour. You can set the minimum number of duplicates to be retained. The system will not delete valid duplicates until the number of invalid duplicates exceeds the minimum number of duplicates you set. The value range for a daily policy is 0–365. The default value is 0, meaning to retain no duplicates. The value range for a weekly policy is 0–52. The default value is 0, meaning to retain no duplicates. The value range for a monthly policy is 0–60. The default value is 0, meaning to retain no duplicates. When determining the number of retained duplicates, consider the following: Data importance and DR requirements. If data of the latest five months must be retained, you are advised to set the retention period by month. Available storage space of a storage device. If the available space of a storage device is sufficient, you are advised to retain more duplicates that are more important. NOTE: For example, if the current time is 2017/4/11 08:40:00, configure the protected group as following: Set the execution policy to be performed at every hour exactly. Set the retention policy to keep five latest duplicates, three daily duplicates, two weekly duplicates, and one monthly duplicate. If the protected group is under the automatically scheduled protection for a long time, the duplicates retained are as follows after the duplicate maintenance is complete at the current time: Latest duplicates were generated at: 2017-04-11 08:00, 2017-04-11 07:00, 2017-04-11 06:00, 2017-04-11 05:00, and 2017-04-11 04:00. Daily duplicates are generated at: 2017-04-10 23:00, 2017-04-09 23:00, and 2017-04-08 23:00. Weekly duplicates were generated at: 2017-04-09 23:00 and 2017-04-02 23:00. The monthly duplicate was generated at: 2017-03-31 23:00. NOTE: If the duplicate maintenance is not triggered, or daily, weekly, or monthly duplicate retention is configured, the number of retained duplicates may exceed the number of latest duplicates being retained.

      5. Click the Consistency Policy tab, select Enable hot backup mode and Configure Min. Archive Space Threshold, and set the threshold.

         To enable the hot backup mode, the archive log mode must be enabled for the database. Otherwise, protected groups cannot be executed after the hot backup mode is enabled. If you do not select Enable hot backup mode, when protected groups are executed based on specified policies, the database remains online but the hot backup mode is not enabled. In this case, data consistency totally relies on storage devices' ability to ensure consistency.

         

         If you select Enable hot backup mode, when protected groups are executed based on specified policies, the database remains online. Before storage array-based replication or taking snapshots, the system will set the database to the hot backup mode to ensure data consistency. After the hot backup mode is enabled, database services may stop because the archive log space is used up during DR execution. Therefore, you are advised to select Configure Min. Archive Space and configure it after enabling the hot backup mode. After the archive log space threshold is specified, DR execution will fail if the archive log space is lower than the specified threshold.

      6. Click OK.

6. Click Next.
7. Set Name and Description of the protected group.
   • Name: contains 4 to 32 characters, including letters, digits, underscores (_), and hyphens (-), but cannot start with a hyphen (-).
   • Description: contains 0 to 255 characters.

8. Optional: If you do not want to manually create a recovery plan for the protected group, select Automatically create a recovery plan after creating protected groups in the lower left corner.
9. Click Finish.
10. Click OK.

Related Operations

• If the protected objects of a protected group or their used storage devices change. On the menu bar, select Resources. And refresh resources or storage devices where the protected objects reside. Then go to the protected group page and refresh protected objects of the protected group by clicking More > Refresh. After the command for refreshing information is sent, you can view details about the command execution in Background Task.
  

  If a recovery plan has been created for a protected group, you can refresh protected objects only when the recovery plan status is Ready, Clear completed, Rollback completed, or Reprotection completed.

• To ensure that information about protected groups is refreshed successfully, you must refresh information about storage devices and hosts at both the production site and DR site.
  

  If a protected group uses backup (SAN), a snapshot copy being used by a recovery plan cannot be deleted. To delete such a snapshot copy, wait until the recovery plan finishes clearing.