Create Protection Groups

You create protection groups to enable Site Recovery Manager to protect virtual machines.

You can organize protection groups in folders. Ensure that protection group names are unique across all folders.

When you create protection groups, wait to ensure that the operations finish as expected. Make sure that Site Recovery Manager creates the protection group and that the protection of the virtual machines in the group is successful.

Prerequisites

• Verify that you have configured vSphere Replication on virtual machines

Procedure

1. In the vSphere Client, click Site Recovery > Open Site Recovery.
2. On the Site Recovery home tab, select a site pair and click View Details.
3. Select the Protection Groups tab, and click New Protection Group to create a protection group.
4. On the Name and direction page, enter a name and description for the protection group, select a direction, and click Next.
5. On the Type page, select Individual VMs (vSphere Replication), and click Next.
   
6. Select virtual machines to add to the protection group, and click Next.
   
7. On the Recovery plan page, you can optionally add the protection group to a recovery plan.

   Option	Description
   Add to existing recovery plan	Adds the protection group to an existing recovery plan.
   Add to new recovery plan	Adds the protection group to a new recovery plan. If you select this option, you must enter recovery plan name.
   Do not add to recovery plan now	Select this option if you do not want to add the protection group to a recovery plan.

8. On the Ready to complete page, review your settings, and click Finish.
   You can monitor the progress of the creation of the protection group on the Protection Group tab.

What to do next

For vSphere Replication protection groups, if the protection status of the protection group is Not Configured, apply inventory mappings to the virtual machines:

• To apply site-wide inventory mappings, or to check that inventory mappings that you have already set are valid, see Configure Inventory Mappings. To apply these mappings to all of the virtual machines, see Apply Inventory Mappings to All Members of a Protection Group.
• To apply inventory mappings to each virtual machine in the protection group individually, see Configure Inventory Mappings for an Individual Virtual Machine in a Protection Group.