Organizations running Dell PowerProtect backup on AWS face a recurring challenge: the multi-appliance ecosystem — PPDM (PowerProtect Data Manager), DDVE (Data Domain Virtual Edition), and DDMC (Data Domain Management Center) — requires careful, sequenced provisioning that is difficult to repeat consistently across regions and accounts.

This post presents an approach to automating Dell PowerProtect deployment on AWS using Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and AWS Step Functions for post-deployment orchestration. The patterns described here are applicable to any enterprise running Dell backup appliances on AWS and looking to move from manual or semi-automated deployments to a fully codified, repeatable framework.

Why Automate Dell Backup on AWS?

Dell PowerProtect components on AWS are typically deployed as EC2 instances from marketplace AMIs. While the deployment itself is straightforward, the challenge lies in what comes after:

DDMC requires an interactive first-login wizard (EULA acceptance, password change, filesystem setup)