Unprotect a VM

If for any reason you do not want a VM to be included any longer in a protection group, you can 'unprotect' a VM.

When you include a VM in a protection group and begin snapshot replication to the cloud file system, the VM is considered ‘protected’ by VMware Live Cyber Recovery.

Having a protected VM ensures that in the event of a disaster, or a ransomware recovery attack, you can recover the VM from those snapshots.

To unprotect a VM, you can remove it from any protection groups it is a member of by doing the following:

• If the protection group is using a VM name pattern, change the name pattern so it does not include the VM name.
• If the protection group is using tag queries, remove those tags from the VM you want to unprotect.
• If the protection group is using folder queries, manually move the VM to a folder not configured in the protection group.
• Delete all snapshots of the VM from all protection groups it was previously included in.
• If the VM was being protected by high-frequency snapshots, you must deactivate the high-freqency snapshots from the VM.

After these tasks are completed, allow roughly two to three days for VMware Live Cyber Recovery space reclamation processes to completely remove the remaining VM snapshots. This process can take longer if there are a large number of snapshots to delete.