A protection group is a logical container for ECS instances that share the same disaster recovery (DR) lifecycle. Create a protection group to enable replication, perform failovers, run DR drills, and fail back from a single control point.
Protection groups are required when using EBS async replication for DR.
How it works
EBS async replication continuously copies disk data from ECS instances at the primary site to a DR site in another region or availability zone. Within a protection group:
Each protected instance's disk writes are asynchronously replicated to the DR site.
Recovery points are generated at regular intervals based on the Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
During a failover, instances switch from the primary site to the DR site using the latest recovery point.
The RPO is 15 minutes, which means up to 15 minutes of data may be lost between the last successful recovery point and the failure event.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure that you have:
A configured site pair with vSwitch mappings and security group mappings. For details, see Step 3: Configure network and security settings.
Procedure
Log on to the Cloud Backup console.
In the navigation pane on the left, choose .
If the page does not show EBS Async Replication mode, click Switch to EBS Async Replication.
On the Site Pairs tab, click the site pair, and then click the Protection Group tab.
ImportantVerify that vSwitch mappings and security group mappings are configured before proceeding. For details, see Step 3: Configure network and security settings.
Click Create Protection Group.
In the Create Protection Group dialog box, configure the following parameters and click OK.
Parameter
Description
Name
A recognizable name for the protection group. The name must be 2 to 128 characters in length, start with a letter, and cannot start with
http://orhttps://. Allowed characters: letters, digits, colons (:), underscores (\_), and hyphens (-).Expected RPO
Set to
15(minutes). This is the maximum tolerable interval between recovery points. In a failure event, data changes made after the last recovery point may be lost.
Verify the result
After the protection group is created, it appears on the Protection Group tab.
What to do next
After you create a protection group, you can perform the following operations.
Operation | Description |
Manage Protected Instance | Add an instance to the protection group or remove an instance that no longer requires protection from the protection group. |
Enable Replication | After you add an instance to the protection group, click Enable Replication to replicate data from the protected instance to the disaster recovery site. |
Disable Replication | Stop replicating data to the disaster recovery site. |
Manage Protection Group | Modify or delete the protection group that contains no instance. After an instance is added to the protection group, you cannot modify the protection group information. |
Forward Protection |
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Enable Reverse Replication | After the disaster recovery site takes over the business and the production site has recovered, replicate data from the disaster recovery site to the production site to prepare for the failback. |
Reverse Protection |
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Clear Protection Group | You can delete a protection group if you no longer need it. |
Fault Drill | Start a fault drill for the protection group. Note You can perform a fault drill if the protection group is in the Replicating Incremental Data state or has a recovery point. For more information, see Fault drill. |
Delete Fault Drill Group | After the fault drill is complete, delete the fault drill group. |