Creating a VMware Backup Policy

A backup policy defines rules for executing backup jobs and generating backups. A backup plan can initiate a backup job only after a backup policy is set for the backup plan. You can create different backup policies to meet diverse backup requirements.

Procedure

On the navigation bar, choose > Backup Policy.
Click Create.

Set basic information of a backup policy.

**Table 1** Parameter description
Parameter	Description	Setting Rule
Backup Policy Name	Name of a user-defined backup policy	The name contains 1 to 128 characters and can contain letters, digits, plus signs (+), underscores (_), hyphens (-), periods (.), and at signs (@).
Description	Description of a backup policy	The description contains a maximum of 1,024 characters.
Schedule	Plan for executing backup jobs based on a specific backup policy. The value can be Periodic or One time. When Schedule is set to Periodic, you need to set scheduling plans for incremental backup. You can determine whether to enable periodic full backup based on site requirements. Related parameters are described as follows: NOTE: If incremental backup and full backup are set to be executed at the same point in time, the system will execute full backup first. Weeks in a Month: Execute backup jobs weekly or in a specific week of each month. Days in a Week: Execute backup jobs on certain days of a week, which is used together with Weeks in a Month. For example, execute backup jobs on Wednesday and Sunday in the first week of each month. Excluded Days in a Month: Execute backup jobs not in those specific days. Execution Time: A specific point in time. The system automatically executes backup jobs at the point in time. You can set one or more points in time. The system performs backup jobs in time sequence. Execution Period: A specific execution period. The system executes a backup job many times at a certain interval within a specific period of time. You can set one or more execution periods. NOTE: A new backup job is started only after an ongoing backup job is completed. If a VM is added to a protected set within an execution period and an ongoing backup job is not complete, the system will back up the newly added VM after the execution period ends. When the execution period ends, an ongoing backup job can continue but a Pending backup job will not be processed.	A higher backup frequency provides more reliable data protection, but requires a longer time and larger space. Choose a schedule based on data importance and service volume. Define a high backup frequency for critical data.
One time	Backup jobs of the backup policy are executed once only. The policy execution time must be set. If this parameter is set, the system automatically executes full backup instead of incremental backup. This parameter is available only when Schedule is set to One time.	The policy execution time must be later than the current system time.
Retention	Defines the period of time or number of backups that backups generated for a protected object can be retained. Three types are available: Permanent Backups are retained permanently. By Backup Quantity Total number of backups can be retained It refers to the total number of backups that generated for a protected object can be retained. Once the number of generated backups exceeds the value, the system automatically deletes the oldest backups that are not within the retention scope of Number of retained backups in a year/month/week/day. Number of retained backups in a year, month, week, or day One backup is retained in every year, month, week, or day since the current time to the time you set. If the current year is 2014 and you want to retain one backup every year in the previous 3 years, the system will retain the latest backups generated in years 2011, 2012, and 2013. By Time Retained for a period Backups generated based on a backup policy will be retained for xx years, months, weeks, or days. Once the retention period ends, the system automatically deletes expired backups. Retained until a specific day Backups generated based on a backup policy will be retained for a specific point in time. Once the retention period ends, the system automatically deletes expired backups.	The total number of retained backups ranges from 1 to 100, and the default value is 90. The number of retained backups in a year ranges from 0 to 999, and the default value is 10. The number of retained backups in a month ranges from 0 to 999, and the default value is 10. The number of retained backups in a week ranges from 0 to 9999, and the default value is 10. The number of retained backups in a day ranges from 0 to 99999, and the default value is 10. NOTE: The total number of retained backups and the backups retained by time cannot be left blank at the same time. The retention period for years ranges from 1 to 25, and the default value is 1. The retention period for months ranges from 1 to 300, and the default value is 1. The retention period for weeks ranges from 1 to 1300, and the default value is 1. The retention period for days ranges from 1 to 9125, and the default value is 1. If backups are retained permanently, they can be used to restore data at any time. But, space occupied by backups cannot be reused. If the space provided by repository is used up, new backups will not be generated. Consider the following when deciding the number of backups to be retained and the retention period: Data importance and disaster recovery requirements. If data of the latest month must be retained, you are advised to set the retention period to at least one month. Available space of the repository. If the available space of the repository is sufficient, you are advised to retain more copies of important backups or retain backups for a long period of time.
Create Verification Data	After this option is enabled, the system will create verification data for backup data and verify the integrity and consistency of the backup data. If this option is disabled, the system only verifies the consistency of the backup metadata. The verification data is used to ensure the integrity and consistency of the backup data when full verification is executed for backups. NOTE: Backup data refers to the real data of users. Backup metadata is the additional information about the location of data blocks, number of disks and others.	This function affects backup performance. If you have demanding requirements on the integrity and consistency of the backup data and no special requirements on backup performance, you are advised to enable this option.
Data Layout	Format of backup data saved on the backup storage. The value can be: Compress: Compressing backup data helps save storage space.	-
Retry	Maximum number of retries. If this parameter is set to ON, you need to set Retry Times and Retry Window. The Retry Window is the maximum time range for retrying failed backup jobs.	The retry times ranges from 1 to 10. The retry window ranges from 1 to 168. For example, a backup job is performed at 9:00. At 9:10, the backup job fails. In the retry plan, the number of retries is set to 3 and the retry window is set to one hour. By default, the system performs a failed backup job five minutes after the backup job execution failure. Therefore, the backup job is performed again between 9:15 and 10:10. If the backup job still fails after three retries within the specified period or the three retries cannot be completed within the specified period, the system will not perform the backup job again. If the backup job succeeds within the specified period, the system will not perform the backup job again.