Creating an SLA policy for Amazon EC2 instances

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 pane, click Manage Protection > Policy Overview.
  2. Click Add SLA Policy.
    The New SLA Policy pane is displayed.
  3. In the Name field, enter a name that provides a meaningful description of the SLA policy.
  4. Click Amazon EC2.
    The SLA policy options for EC2 instances are displayed.
  5. In the Snapshot Protection section, set the following options for snapshot operations:
    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. This field is optional.
    Frequency
    Restriction: The days of the week for Weeks option is available only if you install IBM Spectrum® Protect Plus interim fix 10.1.6 eFix2 or later.
    Enter a frequency for snapshot operations. Choose from Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, or Years. When Weeks is selected, you may 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. This field is optional.
    For example, if you entered the prefix "daily_", all snapshot names that are created with this SLA policy will begin with "daily_".
  6. Click Save.
    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: