Dell DL1000 Appliance User's Guide

A protection schedule defines when backups are transferred from protected agent machines to the AppAssure Core.

Protection schedules are initially defined using the Protect Machine Wizard or the Protect Multiple Machines Wizard . You can then modify the existing schedule at any time from the Summary tab for a specific agent machine.

AppAssure provides a default protection schedule, with two defined protection periods. The first period is for weekdays (Monday through Friday), with a single time period defined (from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM). The default interval (the time period between snapshots) is 3 hours. The second period is for weekends (Saturday and Sunday). The default interval for the second period is 3 hours.

When protection is first enabled, the schedule is activated. Thus, using the default settings, regardless of the current time of day, the first backup will occur every 3 hours.

The first backup transfer saved to the Core is called a base image snapshot. All data on all specified volumes (including the operating system, applications, and settings), are saved to the Core. Thereafter, incremental snapshots (smaller backups, consisting only of data changed on the agent since the last backup) are saved to the core regularly, based on the interval defined.

You can create a custom schedule to change the frequency of backups. For example, you can change the interval for the weekday period to 60 minutes, resulting in snapshots every hour. Or you can increase the interval on weekends from 60 minutes to 180 minutes, resulting in snapshots every three hours when traffic is low.

Other options in the Protection Schedule Wizard page include for a setting a daily protection time. This results in a single backup daily at the period defined (the default setting is 12:00 PM).

The option to initially pause protection prevents a base image from occurring (and in fact, prevents all backups) until you explicitly resume protection. When you are ready to begin protecting your machines based on the established protection schedule, you must explicitly resume protection.