Creating an SLA policy for Amazon EC2 instances

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You can create custom service level agreement (SLA) policies to define snapshot retention and frequency policies that are specific to Amazon EC2 instances.

About this task

When a scheduled backup job runs, a snapshot of the instance is created at the frequency that is defined by the snapshot policy.

If an instance is associated with multiple SLA policies, ensure that the policies that you create are not scheduled to run concurrently. Either schedule the SLA policies to run with a significant amount of time between them, or combine them into a single SLA policy.

Procedure

To create an SLA policy for your instances, complete the following steps:

  1. In the navigation panel, click Manage Protection > Policy Overview.
  2. Click Add SLA Policy to open the Add SLA Policy wizard.
  3. Select Virtualized systems in the Category list.
  4. Click Cloud snapshot and then click Next.
    The SLA policy options are displayed on the Policy rules page.
  5. Complete the following options on the page and then click Next.
    1. Enter a name that provides a meaningful description of the SLA policy.
    2. In the Snapshot Protection section, set the following options for snapshot operations and then click Next:
      Retention
      Specify the retention period for the snapshots.
      Disable Schedule
      Select this checkbox to create the snapshot policy without defining a frequency or start time. Policies that are created without a schedule can be run on demand.
      Repeats
      Enter a frequency for snapshot operations. Choose from Subhourly, Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly. When Weekly is selected, you can select one or more days of the week. The Start Time will apply to the selected days of the week.
      Start Time
      Enter the date and time when you want the snapshot operation to start.
      The time zone is automatically populated with your browser settings. To update the time zone, click the field and select a region and city from the list, for example: Europe/Dublin. You can also click the field and enter a region or city in the Search field, and select an item from the matching results.
      Snapshot Prefix
      Enter a prefix to add to the beginning of snapshot names. Prefixes can help you organize and easily identify snapshots.
      For example, if you entered the prefix "daily_", all snapshot names that are created with this SLA policy will begin with "daily_".
  6. Review your selections, and then click Submit.
    The SLA policy that you created is displayed in the table in the SLA Policies pane.

What to do next

After you create an SLA policy, complete the following actions: