5.5

Creating Protection Groups 3
After you configure a replication solution, you can create protection groups. A protection group is a
collection of virtual machines and templates that you protect together by using SRM.
You include one or more protection groups in each recovery plan. A recovery plan specifies how SRM
recovers the virtual machines in the protection groups that it contains.
You must configure the virtual machines in a protection group so that SRM can add them to the
vCenter Server inventory at the recovery site.
You configure virtual machines and create protection groups differently depending on whether you use
array-based replication or vSphere Replication. You cannot create protection groups that combine virtual
machines for which you configured array-based replication with virtual machines for which you configured
vSphere Replication. However, you can include array-based protection groups and vSphere Replication
protection groups in the same recovery plan.
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About Array-Based Protection Groups and Datastore Groups on page 29
When you create a protection group for array-based replication, you specify array information and
then SRM computes the set of virtual machines into a datastore group. Datastore groups contain all
the files of the protected virtual machines.
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Create vSphere Replication Protection Groups on page 32
You can create protection groups that contain virtual machines that vSphere Replication protects.
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Apply Inventory Mappings to All Members of a Protection Group on page 33
If you add virtual machines to a protection group, or if virtual machines lose their protection, you can
configure protection for all unconfigured virtual machines by using the existing inventory mappings,
in one step.
About Array-Based Protection Groups and Datastore Groups
When you create a protection group for array-based replication, you specify array information and then
SRM computes the set of virtual machines into a datastore group. Datastore groups contain all the files of
the protected virtual machines.
You can add virtual machines to a protection group by creating them on one of the datastores that belong to
the datastore groups that SRM associates with the protection group. You can also add virtual machines to
the protection group by using Storage vMotion to move their storage to one of the datastores in the
datastore group. You can remove a member from a protection group by moving the virtual machine's files
to another datastore.
If you disable protection on a virtual machine, you must move the files of that virtual machine to an
unprotected datastore. If you leave the files of an unprotected virtual machine in a protected datastore,
recovery fails for all the virtual machines in that datastore.
VMware, Inc.
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