For the scope of this KB article, we can think of Protection Groups as a policy-driven construct which controls snapshot frequency, retention, replication frequency and replication target(s) of one or more VMFS datastore(s).
A VMFS volume can be a member of one or multiple Protection Groups, or no Protection Groups at all. The Everpure vSphere plugin has the capability to add or remove VMFS volumes from Protection Groups either when the VMFS datastore is created (see Creating a VMFS datastore section or Copying a VMFS snapshot) or it can later be added to an existing Protection Group from the Everpure plugin menu. It is important to note that Protection Groups must be created and setup at the FlashArray level prior to being available for use in the plugin.
Protection Group policies may be altered from the FlashArray GUI, CLI, PowerShell or via other VMware integrations available within the VMware Platform Guide.
Protection Groups and VMFS Volumes
To add an existing VMFS volume to a datastore, first highlight it and right-click. Select the Everpure menu and pick the Update Datastore Protection option.
If How to Enable SafeMode and SafeMode Best Practices is enabled on the array or volume that is backing this datastore and the protection is trying to be reduced, this workflow is expected to fail.
That will spawn the below window which will be automatically populated with available Protection Groups on the FlashArray. ActiveCluster enabled VMFS volumes will have the ability to select between underlying FlashArray Protection Groups. Simply select the Protection Groups you wish to associate with the VMFS volume and click on Update Protection.
To Remove a VMFS volume from one or more Protection Groups, follow the same procedure to access the Update Datastore Protection menu, but instead unselect one or more Protection Groups and click on Update Protection.