The Microsoft application agent enables onboarding existing stand-alone deployments, including their existing backups, to Data Manager. Existing backups are Microsoft application agent backups that are performed before integrating the Microsoft application agent with the Data Manager software and added as an asset to a Data Manager protection policy.

With the onboarding capability, Data Manager provides the following centralized features:

• Visibility of both existing backups and any new self-service or Data Manager policy-driven backups.
• Automatic configuration of target protection storage based on the Data Manager protection policies that are used for database.
• All the other functionality that is provided for Data Manager protection policies.

Notes:

• After discovery is executed, it takes about 30 minutes for the copies to appear in the Data Manager under assets.
• Onboarding of SQL backup copies to Data Manager is supported only from backups that are performed with Microsoft application agent 4.7 and later.
• Up to three previous months of existing backups can be onboarded.
• Retention lock is not supported for discovered existing backups in Data Manager.
• Onboarding is not supported for DD Boost-over-FC backups and 32-bit FCI instance backups.