The following steps will guide you through creating a plan for backing up end user data:
- From the Start screen, select Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager. The DPM Administrator Console will load and the Monitoring task area will be highlighted.
- Select the Protection task area. Click the New button on the ribbon bar and the Welcome to the New Protection Group wizard will appear.
- In the Welcome to the New Protection Group wizard, click Next. On the Select Protection Group Type page, select Client and click Next.
- On the Select Group Members page, either type the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the computer name you want to protect or add multiple computers in a single operation by using a text file and click Next.
You can add multiple computers in a single operation via a text file. In the text file, you need to enter each computer on a new line. Microsoft recommends that you use the FQDN of the target computers. For example, would enter multiple computers in a computers.txt file as follows:
Win10a.virt.lab
Win10b.virt.lab
Win10c.virt.lab
Win10a.virt.lab
Win10b.virt.lab
Win10c.virt.lab
- On the Specify Inclusions and Exclusions page, under Folder Inclusions and Exclusions, identify the folders to include or exclude from protection on the selected computers you are looking to back up. To select from a list of well-known folders, such as Program Files, Desktop, Downloads, or My Videos, click the drop-down list. Under File type exclusions, identify the file types to exclude by using their file extensions, separating multiple entries via a comma, and click Next:
- In the Select Data Protection Method page, identify how you want to handle short- and long-term backup and click Next.
Short-term backup always reverts to disk storage first, with the option of backing up from disk storage to public Azure with Azure Backup (for both short- or long-term backup). As an alternative to long-term backup to public Azure, you can also configure long-term backup to a supported standalone tape device or tape library that is connected to your DPM server.
- In the Select Short-Term Goals page, identify your short-term recovery goals for disk-based protection. In Retention Range, identify how long you want to keep the data on disk; by default, this is five days. In Synchronization Frequency, identify how often you want to run an incremental backup to disk; by default, this is every 4 hours. In the Alerting Option field, identify the frequency of when you get alerted about a disconnected computer; by default, this is at 14 days. Click Next:
- In the Review Disk Storage Allocation page, review the storage pool disk space that has been allocated to this protection group and click Next.
- On the Summary page, review the settings that will be used to create the recovery group and click Create Group, and then click Close. After the initial replication of the data occurs, the newly created protection group status will show up as OK on the Status page. Backups then take place in line with the settings you have identified for the protection group.