SCDPM Online

We all know that one of the biggest frustrations of DPM is that each DPM server has to be managed individually as there is no central console.  This also includes reporting and this can be an even bigger frustration as if you have more than one DPM server, you can’t get a single report displaying the status of the protection being provided for a given period. Although this single report isn’t available in DPM, it is possible to create it in Operations Manager.  If you have Operations Manager in your environment and you are using the DPM management pack to monitor and manage your DPM servers... read more

Hi All, Jason Buffington has posted five new DPM 2010 data sheets on his All Backed Up blog, http://blogs.technet.com/b/jbuff/archive/2010/06/21/dpm-2010-datasheets.aspx. These data sheets cover how to protect SQL, Exchange, SharePoint and Clients as well as providing a DPM 2010 overview.  I recommend you take a look! Product Overview of DPM 2010 How to Protect Microsoft SQL Server with DPM 2010 How to Protect Microsoft Exchange with DPM 2010 How to Protect Microsoft SharePoint with DPM 2010 How to Protect Windows Clients with DPM 2010   Enjoy. David Allen MVP ... read more

DPM 2010 was only released earlier this month but the product team are already looking at the next version.  They are currently scoping what should go into the next version of the DPM and they want to know what you want! Follow the link below and complete the survey. http://blogs.technet.com/b/dpm/archive/2010/06/18/dpm-what-s-next-let-your-voice-be-heard.aspx This is your chance to be heard, so take the opportunity.    David Allen MVP System Center Operations Manager http://www.scdpmonline.org http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/aquilaweb     read more

The DPM 2010 management pack beta for System Center Operations Manager 2007 is now available on Microsoft Connect for download.  I am in the process of reviewing this management pack so I will post more details soon.  I will also be collecting feedback for the product team so if you have any feedback on this MP, please let me know.  This management pack has a different name from the current DPM 2007 MP so it will import along side the existing MP and will not update it.   Download the MP from... read more

At MMS this year, i365 announced that they are releasing an appliance that combines EVault with System Center Data Protection Manager.  This appliance will provide the functionality to protect heterogeneous platforms and extend DPM into the cloud.  This close relationship between i365 and Microsoft has resulted in i365 joining the System Center Alliance which is a network of System Center technology providers. View the i365 site for more information, http://www.i365.com. Click here for more information on i365 joining the System Center... read more

Ever wanted to know how much data your DPM servers are churning?  Perhaps you are looking to implement DPM2DPM4DR and want to know how much data you'll be transferring across you WAN, or perhaps you are investigating what storage to purchase and need this data to make an informed assessment.  Well this is how you calculate your churn, it's easy to do but a bit time consuming as it's not possible to export data from the Jobs view. Open the DPM console, select the Monitoring pane and the Jobs tab. Click Create Filter from the Actions pane. Give your new filter a name and select a 24 hour... read more

I was using the DPM 2010 Upgrade Advisor to get the recommended steps for upgrading DPM servers that share a tape library when I noticed a small, but important, mistake. If you use the upgrade advisor to  provide the upgrade steps for a DPM Library Master server, step 1 looks like this. Remove Library sharing on library client using the following instructions: On each library client run the following commands on an elevated command prompt: SetSharedDPMDatabase.exe -removedatabasesharing AddLibraryServerForDPM.exe -dpmserverwithlibrary <FQDN of Tape library server> All... read more

I recently found that Microsoft released a product called Remote Desktop Connection Manager at the end of May. If you have a number of DPM servers to administer this tool could be very useful to you as you can only access the DPM console on the DPM server. What's good about this, and other products like it, is that it stores all the connection details for all your servers so connecting and logging into servers is much quicker and simpler. It also allows you to create nested groups so you can organize all you server connections to best suit your needs. Another feature I also like is ... read more

I was recently reviewing the hardware recommendations for DPM2010 on TechNet, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff399280.aspx, to make sure there are no radical changes . Whilst reviewing I noticed that the minimum page file requirement is greater than the recommended page file size. Component Minimum Requirement Recommended Requirement Page File 0.2 percent of the combined size of all recovery point volumes, in addition to the recommended size (generally, 1.5 times the amount of RAM on the... read more

The newly released version of Data Protection Manager is only supported on Server 2008 x64 or Server 2008 R2; if you are deploying on Server 2008 x64 you need to make sure you have these three patches installed before you install DPM2010. "FIX: You are prompted to format the volume when a formatted volume is mounted on a NTFS folder that is located on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista (KB971254) Dynamic disks are marked as "Invalid" on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista when you ... read more

Jason Buffington, Senior Product Manager for DPM, has announced the release of the DPM upgrade advisor. Here is the post with all the details, http://blogs.technet.com/jbuff/archive/2010/04/29/now-available-dpm-upgrade-advisor.aspx. Jason also answers some of the most common asked questions as well, like "when will the full DPM2010 product be available?" and "when will it be available on TechNet and MSDN?". However, the most common question I have seen asked is "will I be able to upgrade from the DPM2010 eval to the full product?", and this question is answered in the upgrade advisor.... read more

Hello All, I have started a poll to measure what people think are the best new features or improvements in DPM 2010. There have been a large number of improvements in SCDPM2010 and would be great to know what your favourite is. Please visit http://www.scdpmonline.org/poll.aspx to select yours now ! And don't worry, you do not need to register to take part in this poll :-) I look forward to you responses...     David Allen MVP System Center Operations Manager   ... read more

A little while back there were a couple of patches released to deal with problems relating to DPM2010 RC protecting Hyper-V R2 virtual machines on CSV's. What wasn't made clear though is to install both these patches, they need to be installed in specific order. Matt McSpirit at Microsoft has posted a blog article to cover exactly how these patches should be installed, check it out at http://blogs.technet.com/mattmcspirit/archive/2010/03/26/dpm-2010-rc-and-hyper-v-r2-vm-s-on-csv-s-order-of-patches.aspx. Please read Matt's article before deploying KB975921 and KB975354 to save... read more

Thought I would share this nice picture that outlines what DPM 2010 can protect and what protection it can provide.         David Allen MVP System Center Operations Manager   http://www.scdpmonline.org http://wmug.co.uk/blogs/aquilaweb     read more

For those of you who have used DPM 2007, you'll know that if you wanted to provide Bare Metal Recovery protection you had to install a second piece of software called the DPM System Recovery Tool (SRT). This then meant you potentially needed more hardware and then you find that you could only protect Windows Server 2003. Well things have now changed in DPM 2010, it is now integrated into the DPM product and you can provide BMR protection from within the same DPM console as you would protect anything else. "Bare metal recovery is the process of rebuilding a computer after a... read more