A Store Group is a logical grouping of stores. Store groups are used to configure a Protection Plan or Store Copy Task to use media in a rotation scheme. Using a store group with removable media is a good practice for getting data off premise, providing an offsite copy in case of a site wide disaster.


To create a new store group, right-click either the Storage folder or All Store Groups folder and then select the Add a Store Group action. The Add Store Group wizard starts by prompting you to name the store group. Choose a meaningful store group name. For example, if you are backing up data to a new group of stores in media rotation each quarter of the year, your first store group could be called "Q1 Backups Group".


After you have named the group, click Next and select which stores will be members of the group. Check each store you would like to have in the group. You can change the priority of the stores within the group using the up or down arrows to the right of the list. Store priority is one method of selecting a store. See "Store selection preference" below.


When you have finished choosing the stores you would like to have as members of the group, click Next and choose a "Store selection preference".


When a Protection Plan or Store Copy Task is configured to target a store group, the stores in the group are analyzed and a determination is made to use an available store based on the store selection preference setting for the group.


If you choose "Selects the first available store in the order specified", the first available store will be used in priority order specified in the list. A store is considered unavailable if it is offline, read-only or has less than the minimum free space required. Choose this setting for automatic fail-over between online media.


If you choose "Selects the most recently used available store", the most recently used and available store in the group will be used for subsequent plan or copy task runs until the store is either offline, read-only or has less than the minimum free space required. Choose this setting for dynamic rotation of removable media.


If you choose "Selects the least recently used available store", the least recently used and available store in the group will be used for the next plan or copy task run. Stores are selected in circular order creating copies of data on multiple stores. Choose this setting for round-robin selection of fixed drive media.


After you have selected the stores to include in the group and a selection preference, click Next. You can review the store group settings before finishing the Add Store Group wizard.