Creating a validation plan

To validate a backup set as an off-host data processing operation, you create a validation plan.

To create a validation plan

  1. In the Cyber Protect console, click Management > Validation.

  2. Click Create plan.

    The template for a new validation plan opens.

  3. To modify the plan name, click the default name.

  4. In Agent, select the agent that will perform the validation, and then click OK.

    If you want to perform validation by running a virtual machine from a backup, select a machine with Agent for VMware or Agent for Hyper-V. Otherwise, select any machine that has access to the backup location.

  5. In Items to validate, select the backups sets that you want to validate.

    1. Select the scope for the plan – individual backup sets or entire locations, by clicking Locations or Backups in the upper-right corner.

      If the selected backups are encrypted, all of them must use the same encryption password. For backups that use different encryption passwords, create separate plans.

    2. Click Add.

    3. Depending on the scope of the validation plan, select locations or a location and backup sets, and then click Done.

    4. Click Done.

  6. In What to validate, select which backups (also known as recovery points) within the selected backup sets to validate. The following options are available:

    • All backups

    • Only the last backup

  7. In How to validate, select the validation method.

    You can select one or both of the following options:

    • Checksum verification

    • Run as a virtual machine

    For more information about the methods, refer to Validation methods.

  8. [If you selected Checksum verification] Click Done.

  9. [If you selected Run as a virtual machine]. Configure the settings for this method.

    1. In Target machine, select the virtual machine type (ESXi or Hyper-V), the host, and the machine name template, and then click OK.

      The default name is [Machine Name]_validate.

    2. In Datastore (for ESXi) or Path (for Hyper-V), select the datastore for the virtual machine.
    3. Select one or both of the validation methods that Run as virtual machine provides:
      • VM heartbeat
      • Screenshot validation

    4. Click VM settings to change the memory size and network connections of the virtual machine.

      By default, the virtual machine is not connected to a network and the virtual machine memory size equals that of the original machine.

    5. Click Done.

  10. In the validation plan template, click Schedule, and then configure it.

  11. [If the backup sets selected in Items to validate are encrypted] Enable the Backup password switch, and then provide the encryption password.

  12. To modify the plan options, click the gear icon.

  13. Click Create.

As a result, your validation plan is ready and will run according to the schedule that you configured. To run the plan immediately, select it in Management > Validation, and then click Run now.

After the plan starts, you can check the running activities and drill down to their details in Cyber Protect console, under Monitoring > Activities.

A validation plan might include multiple backups and one backup can be validated by multiple validation plans. The following table summarizes the possible statuses of the validation activity.

Activity result Plan with one backup Plan with multiple backups
Success All validation methods succeeded All validation methods succeeded in all backups
Success with warnings N/A At least one validation method failed in at least one backup
Fail At least one validation method failed At least one validation method failed in all backups