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SnapCenter Software 6.0

Backup schedules of custom plug-in resources

Contributors netapp-nsriram
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The most critical factor in determining a backup schedule is the rate of change for the resource. The more often you back up your resources, the fewer archive logs SnapCenter has to use for restoring, which can result in faster restore operations.

You might back up a heavily used resource every hour, while you might back up a rarely used resource once a day. Other factors include the importance of the resource to your organization, your service-level agreement (SLA) and your recovery point objective (RPO).

SLA defines the level of service expected and addresses many service-related issues, including the availability and performance of service. RPO defines the strategy for the age of the files that must be recovered from backup storage for regular operations to resume after a failure. SLA and RPO contribute to the data protection strategy.

Backup schedules have two parts, as follows:

  • Backup frequency

    Backup frequency (how often backups are to be performed), also called schedule type for some plug-ins, is part of a policy configuration. For example, you might configure the backup frequency as hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. You can access policies in the SnapCenter GUI by clicking Settings > Policies.

  • Backup schedules

    Backup schedules (exactly when backups are to be performed) are part of a resource or resource group configuration. For example, if you have a resource group that has a policy configured for weekly backups, you might configure the schedule to back up every Thursday at 10:00 p.m. You can access resource group schedules in the SnapCenter GUI by clicking Resources, then selecting the appropriate plug-in, and clicking View > Resource Group.