A new per-cluster construct called a Protection Group, groups protected VMs and assigns them the same protection attributes. A VM can be protected simply by adding it to a protection group for which attributes have already been defined.

A virtual machine can only belong to one protection group.

Currently HyperFlex Protection Groups exist for administrative purposes only. Protection Groups should not be confused with Consistency Groups. VMs are configured as part of a Consistency Group in order to guarantee that all VMs in the group reflect exactly the same point-in-time and thus guaranteeing write-fidelity across VMs.