Create backup policies

Backup policies, which are also referred to as service level agreement (SLA) policies, define parameters that are applied to backup jobs. These parameters include the frequency and retention of backups.

About this task

IBM Spectrum® Protect Plus includes default SLA policies as described in Managing SLA policies for backup operations. You can use the default policies as they are or modify the policies. You can also create custom SLA policies.

For example purposes, the following steps show how to create an SLA policy for VMware. This task does not include instructions for enabling replication for vSnap servers or for copying data to secondary backup storage, which are optional features. For information about how to set up these features in the SLA policy, see Creating an SLA policy for hypervisors, databases, and file systems.

Backup copies of data are called snapshots.

Procedure

To create an SLA policy, 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 VMware, Hyper-V, Exchange, Microsoft 365, SQL, Oracle, Db2, MongoDB, Catalog, and Windows File Systems.
  5. In the Backup Policy section, set the following options for backup operations. These operations occur on the vSnap servers that are defined in the System Configuration > Backup Storage > Disk window.
    Retention
    Specify the retention period for the backup snapshots.
    Disable Schedule
    Select this check box to create the main 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 backup operations. Enter a frequency for backup operations. Choose from Subhourly, Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly. When Weekly 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 that you want the backup 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.
    Target Site
    Select the target backup site for backing up data.
    A site can contain one or more vSnap servers. If more than one vSnap server is in a site, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server manages data placement in the vSnap servers.
    Only sites that are associated with a vSnap server are shown in this list. Sites that are added to IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, but are not associated with a vSnap server, are not shown.
    Only use encrypted disk storage
    Select this check box to back up data to encrypted vSnap servers if your environment includes a mixture of encrypted and unencrypted servers.
    Restriction: If this option is selected and there are no encrypted vSnap servers available, the associated job will fail.

    The following example shows a new SLA policy named Copper that runs every Monday at midnight with a retention of 1 month:

    Figure 1. Creating an SLA policy
    This image depicts an example of creating an SLA policy
  6. Click Save. The SLA policy can now be applied to backup job definitions as shown in Add resources to a job definition.