DPM 2010 Launch Week

8/4/2019 DPM 2010 Launch Week

1/20

DPM 2010 launch week @ MMS 2010: Part 1: Technical

Introduction

Session 1: Technical Introduction to DPM 2010

The first session given by the backup guy himselfJason Buffington. The technical

introduction started with the reason why MS decided to build a backup solution. Microsoft

builds applications such as exchange, sql and SharePoint. Third-party vendors are building

solutions to protect these environments. Microsoft found out that many companies waited to

implement the new applications until the backup vendors are ready to protect the

application. With the years passing by and the applications evolving, the backup vendors had

more and more issues in protecting the workload. And thats the reason why they decided to

create their own solution.

Second important reason When you are in disaster recovery mode, and you are trying to

recover but something is failing, who do you turn to? The backup vendor? He or she will

say it is an Microsoft issue. And Microsoft? They will say that the data isnt written

correctly on tape or on disk. So here is a gap. Now that Microsoft has its own backup

solution it is much simpler. Something wrong? Microsoft support. Their applications, their

backup solution. Fix it :-)

Here is an overview of what DPM is possible of protecting. This slide has been showed

already many times and you will see it on many more occassions.

The statement about DPM couldnt stay away either. Those who followed my DPM session

@ Microsoft Belgium or watched it online through edge (link 1, link 2) will certainly

remember this one:

System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 delivers unified data protection for Windows

servers and clients as a best-of-breed backup & recovery solution from Microsoft, for

Windows environments. DPM 2010 provides the best protection and most supportable restore

scenarios from disk, tape and cloud -- in a scalable, reliable, manageable and cost-effective

way.

Next up was an high-level overview of the capabilities of DPM 2010

These are the platforms supported with DPM 2010

Windows Server 2008 R2
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_2D09F03E.png


2/20

Windows Server 2008 Windows Storage Server 2008 Windows Server 2003 R2 Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 Windows Unified Data Storage Server Windows 7 Windows Vista Business or higher Windows XP Professional - Service Pack 2

And these are the applications supported with DPM 2010

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 SAP running on Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft Exchange Server 2010including DAG Microsoft Exchange Server 2007including LCR, CCR , and SCR Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2010 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Windows SharePoint Foundation Services 4.0 Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0 Windows SharePoint Services version 2.0 Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Windows Essential Business Server 2008 Windows Small Business Server 2008

Also given was a short overview of what it can do with your application loads

File Services:

Windows Server 2003 through 2008 R2 Self-Service End-User Restore directly from Windows Explorer or Microsoft Office

(yes, support from end-user recovery starting from Office 2003 or later)

SQL:

SQL Server 2000 through 2008, including SAP Protect entire SQL instanceauto-protection of new DBs (Just select an instance and

every new database within that instance is discovered and protected!)

Ability to protect 1000s of DBs using a single DPM server Self-Service Restore Tool for Database Administrators (Let your SQL admins recover

their databases their selves. No more backup administrator intervention!)

Recover 2005 databases to 2008 servers (Great feature to test the compatibility of lineof business applications onto the 2008 version of SQL)

Sharepoint:


3/20


4/20

Of course there had to be some explanation about the licensing. One of the cool features of

DPM is that it only has one agent. Yes there are 2 versions of it, the 32 and 64 bit version,

but in the end it is one agent. You want to protect workstations? 1 agent, you want to protect

exchange? Same agent. System state? One agent.

Is it the same for the licensing? No, there are three different licenses for the agents as youcan see in the screenshot:

Client DPMLo 1 workstation protected means 1 client DPML.

Standard DPMLo A server where you only protect files or system state will cost you 1 standard

DPML

Enterprise DPMLo A server where you protect application workloads such as exchange, sql,

sharepoint, Bare Metal Recovery or DPM2DPM4DR (DPM to DPM for

Disaster Recovery, more on that in part 5: Disaster recovery and advancedscenarios)

Do you need to calculate this for yourself? No, from the moment you start to protect

something, DPM will calculate itself what kind of license you need. It is even getting better,

you can deploy on every server or workstation a DPM agent with your favorite deployment

tool. If it is not protected, you dont pay anything and the agent will be sitting there,

disabled, waiting to start working when YOU decide it.

Where does DPM situates?

The above screenshot shows the positioning of DPM. It is a part of the System Center suiteand is both used with the big brother versions of system center and with little sister

SCE. If you are still deciding on what to use as your management solution, make sure thatyou check out the SMSE and SMSD licenses for the suite.
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_62728C96.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_7F3C2778.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_62728C96.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_7F3C2778.png


5/20

Thats it for part 1, next parts will be more in depth of what has been told here.

DPM 2010 launch week @ MMS 2010: Part 2: ProtectionApplications

Session 2: Protecting Application Servers with DPM 2010

Session two of an entire DPM day (first four sessions were all on the same day so for me it

was like being a child in the candy store for the entire day! Not to mention that I had the

change to have speak to Jason himself in the evening :-))

Again this was presented by Jason Buffington. This session explained the entire VSS process

and the differences when protecting exchange, sql or sharepoint. So here are my notes:

How does this VSS writer thingy works?

Heres how:

To start, when you decide to protect a workload, DPM will create a replica. This means that

it will make an exact copy of the original sources, whether this is sharepoint, sql databases or

files. After that, DPM will never ever again make an entire copy of the data.

So what does it do? DPM works with Express Full backups which is block level based and

synchronizations which is byte level based. The express full backup is the latest version. Allprevious versions are the so-called layers.

So after the replica, DPM will create a volume map of the data. Is it large? No, a 0 or 1 for

each 120 kb so the footprint is small. Heres an example of a volume map

So lets say after one hour, an express full backup will be taken and this is how the volume

map looks like
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_7FB1CEFC.png


6/20

This is what happens:

1.VSS Snapshot taken on production volume to ensure consistent data

2.Cache of changed blocks is sent to DPM server

Important to know here is that the file IO continues, the VSS writer will only freeze the

blocks that have changed so that the server can continue normal operation! So no more

placing databases offline, bringing solutions in maintenance mode If it has a vss writer, it

is all online.

Finally, after the blocks are sent to the DPM server, the VSS writer will release the frozen

blocks

In a nutshell, this is how the express full backups work.

But how does the synchronization works? Again, this was explained with an example so here

goes:

We assume in our example that we are working with a database

Every xx minutes (depending on your settings) you synchronize the closed transaction logs
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_6541B618.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_46D7752F.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_7D94D033.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_1E1C0FE6.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_02E3B6E5.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_6541B618.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_46D7752F.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_7D94D033.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_1E1C0FE6.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_02E3B6E5.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_6541B618.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_46D7752F.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_7D94D033.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_1E1C0FE6.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_02E3B6E5.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_6541B618.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_46D7752F.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_7D94D033.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_1E1C0FE6.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_02E3B6E5.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_6541B618.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_46D7752F.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_7D94D033.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_1E1C0FE6.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_02E3B6E5.png


7/20

In the case that you need to recover, you return to the database express full backup from 0:00

and roll forward the transaction logs till the point in time that you want.

Thats it. So with DPM 2010 you can go to about any point back in time when you want.

Now how many points can you create?

If you perform the following schedule:

you want to be able to return 512 weeks times 7 days (one express full per day) times 24

times 4 (24 * 4 for 15 minutes synch) means 344.000 points in time. This is the maximum

but would mean point in time recovery for the last 9 years!

Now here is the joke:

MS doesnt want you to recover a SQL 2005 database in 9 years It will cost a lot of disk It will cost A LOT of disk

(For your information, these are not my words :-))

If you want more information about this mechanism, make sure you check out

http://edge.technet.com/Media/DPM-2007-SP1-How-does-DPM-really-work/or one of our

SCUG offline DPM events

You can imagine of course that there are some differences in protecting the different

workloads. So here is an overview of the differences

Exchange 2007 LCR (Local Continuous Replication)

What is it? One exchange server with a redundant copy of the database. It can failover to the

redundant copy in case of database corruption or when the drive is lost where the active

database stands.

DPM will backup the database from the Active Database drive

Exchange 2007 CCR (Cluster Continuous Replication)

What is it? Redundant exchange servers and redundant databases. These can be geo-diverse

and the database logs are replicated.

DPM can now backup the active or passive database which you prefer.

You can choose this on a role preferred base:

Activemost current data Passiveleast production impact

Or you can choose this on a node preferred base when you are working geo-diverse, then youchoose the node closest to the DPM server.
http://edge.technet.com/Media/DPM-2007-SP1-How-does-DPM-really-work/http://edge.technet.com/Media/DPM-2007-SP1-How-does-DPM-really-work/http://edge.technet.com/Media/DPM-2007-SP1-How-does-DPM-really-work/


8/20

Exchange 2007 SCR ( Standby Continuous Replication)

This is even more intelligent. Suppose you have a DPM server on your main site and

exchange SCR. The first DPM server will protect from the passive node. SCR means that it

will replicate to a standby node and if you see this picture this means that it need to replicate

over the WAN. Suppose that you have a secondary DPM on that other site. Instead of

replicating twice over the WAN, DPM is smart enough to do the second protection from the

standby node, thus no additional bandwidth necessary.

Exchange 2010 DAG

And finally there is dag, where DPM works with a copy instead of a full backup. This lowers

the resources necessary for protecting your exchange environment. See the screenshot

SQL Server Mirrored database

Mirrors feature redundant SQL servers and redundant databases Databases logs are replicated Database Failover is automatically recovered

SQL Server Log Shipping

This features one SQL server with redundant databases.

Each copy is treated as a unique drive by DPM Redundant backups require that both drives be protected Express Fulls only no T-Logs

If you are wondering why there are no transaction log backups with this kind of solution, the

reason is pretty simple Never but never let a protection application work with the

transaction logs when the system is doing it himself. It would be asking for trouble.

Sharepoint
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_4EBEF1C4.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_2A7A0D42.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_4EBEF1C4.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_2A7A0D42.png


9/20

Sharepoint uses a lookup to determine what kind of data is necessary to protect the sharepoint

farm, including the content databases, web front end servers and so on.

For 2007 you still need a recovery farm if you want to do a item level recovery but with

sharepoint 2010 you can actually do item-level recovery WITHOUT a recovery farm.

In the end, one final question

Each time you deploy something How are you going to back it up?

DPM 2010 launch week @ MMS 2010: Part 3: Protecting

Windows Clients

A session given by Tim Kremer and in backup, you guessed it, Jason Buffington :-)

This session was all about protecting your clients. First thing we started with was the reason

why we wanted to protect clients. Many companies or IT pros will react that users should

save their valuable data somewhere on the network or take a backup on their own. While this

probably works with one or two percent of the companies, Im sure it fails with the other 98

percent. The reason for that is simple. When people are travelling, they wont be uploading

their data to a network share, and even when they are in the office and need to copy their data

on a Friday evening to the server guess what will happen : -). If they need to backup theirown data, then you will probably have users that have a 100 copies of their data on a

expensive network share and others who never bother or backup to their local drive on their

laptops. So if the laptop gets stolen or the disk is dead.

According to some research companies (something like forrester or gartner or so, forgot

which one) about 60% of the intelligence of a company resides on local disk from the

users. Now thats a lot. So if we want to protect that knowledge, then we need to find a good

way to do that without too much trouble and without disturbing the users or let them do it

themselves. It just wont happen. Period. (This process of letting the end users do thebackup their selves is often called the tax for the end users)

When designing the solution, the architects @ Microsoft had the following challenges:

Mobile workforce Different users with different needs Large scale (many many desktops / laptops)

So they created the following goals:


10/20

Remove the end user tax Support roaming user backups Allow customizability for specific users Enforce admin defined restrictions Keep IT costs low

How did they solved those requirements.

With the same agent as the one for the servers you can start protecting your clients. By using

your favorite deployment method (SCE, SCCM, AD, MDT) you can get the agents out

there. Remember, you dont pay licenses for an agent if you dont use it. So deploying it

over your entire network is not going to give you a licensing issue. You start paying the

moment you start to protect it. Period.

Second is that an IT Pro can create different policies. Lets say that we want that a client will

protect its my documents, a specific company directory and maybe some more folders that

can be imported for the user such as favorites or something. But of course, we dont want theMy pictures or My music folder to be protected. The company is not interested in getting all

the vacation pictures or mp3 library of their employees. (Ok, the IT Pros might be interested

in the mp3 collection :-)). By defining a policy and including / excluding folders you can

achieve this. And it gets even better, you dont need to know the exact location of the my

documents folder. DPM will use the path variable to define where it is. And last but not

least, you can actually deny certain extensions. No .mp3 files is a good example for

this. Whether we like it or not, end-users are mostly smart enough to see that certain foldersare excluded and will move their valuable data to a folder that is protected.

Now what if users want to be able to protect some specific folders? Folders that are not

default in the company but still contain valuable information. By giving the end-users (or

some of them) the rights they can choose their selves certain folders to be protected.

Now what about users on the road? How is this going to work? Heres the answer.

1. They support backup over VPN and direct access. So whenever a client is connected to the

main office over vpn or direct access it has the possibility of synchronizing with the

office. Remember the block-level copy from part 2! So the data that is sent over is really not

that much.
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_760162FD.png


11/20

2. DPM provides you with two mechanisms. While performing a backup, it will send the

data to the DPM server if it is reachable. At the same time, it will keep a local copy on the

laptop. So users will be able to restore from their local cache if necessary. Will this protect

you from hardware failure or from a stolen laptop? No, it wont, but users will be able to go

to a previous version of a document when it is necessary even if they are working on the

road.

3. What about notifications. Everybody who has ever worked with DPM 2007 or with

whatever backup solution for that matter will know that the system will start complainingwhenever it cant reach its clients. DPM will do that also but they built in a system where

you can specify how long it takes before it starts to complain. Consider the fact that many

people take 14 days vacation. Add the weekends with that and you get 18 days. So only

after 18 days you let the DPM server complain that is missing a connection to a client. This

way you will avoid a lot of false alarms and only those that take more then 2 weeks vacation

or those that are travelling longer are going in alert.

What about the costs? You can imagine that all the users data will take a lot of diskspace. First you know that you can use low-cost storage to do this and second, because thesystem is working pretty well you dont have many human effort. Compare it with letting the

users backing up their own data to a network share. This is mostly high-end storage which

costs a lot, never cleaned by the users and you will probably have many files standing there

50 times. DPM does not need this because it only contains the changes. Second, think about

the value of the data. Ask the business what it cost when a road warrior loses its laptop and

the data that it contains. You can do the math quickly.

So how does the end-user sees this?

Below are a few screenshots of the end-user experience

End-user recovery
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_0EED0D76.png


12/20

Agent in the notification area

Agent UI

Want more? How about this

A user loses his or hers laptop. Or the machine just died. You have a backup of yesterday on

your DPM server. The deployment team quickly prepares a new laptop with their favorite

OSD tool. Agent is installed or sysprepped on it. You jump behind the DPM console and do

a restore to another location. User gets the data back :-)

Even more?

The DPM agent allows the end-user to synchronize now. So suppose they made some

important changes to a document they can synchronize it whenever they want to the DPMserver if they have connection or to the local cache if they are not connected. So if the end-

user really did some important work, then he or she can create a backup of their own before

flying out or going on a vacation. With one simple click, the system will do the work

DPM 2010 launch week @ MMS 2010: Part 4:

Virtualization and Data Protection, better together

This was the last session of DPM Wednesday, and given by Asim Mitra and Vijay Sen, 2

program managers within Microsoft and responsible for the Virtualization protection within

DPM.
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_1155F39A.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_797F3240.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_1155F39A.pnghttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_797F3240.png


13/20

On the agenda of this session:

Protecting your hyper-v environment Hyper-V Recovery Options Recovering from a disaster Sample Customer Deployments

They started by outlining the top priorities for CIOs in 2010

If you look at the screenshot, you will see that Disaster Recovery / Business Continuance and

Server Virtualization comes in 2nd and 3rd. First one is cost reduction, but I guess that will

be so for the next x years :-)

I know that virtualization is more sexy then disaster recovery for an IT Pro, but it is of

course pretty important to think about backup / disaster recovery whenever you deploy a new

solution into your environment. So why not do this hand in hand? DPM is designed to

protect hyper-v fully and if you have read one of my previous posts you know that it is also

capable of backing up vmware virtual machines if you tweak a bit :-)

So what are the features of DPM 2010 for protecting hyper-v?

Host-level backup of Hyper-V on WS 2008 R2 Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) support Seamless protection of Live Migrating VMs Alternate Host Recovery Item Level Recovery

Sounds interesting? Lets continue to have a look.

First, they started with a discussion on what to protect. Should we protect on the host andbackup entire VMs? Or should we protect inside the guests and take the data? Now this was

the sign for many people in the room to shoot the profile of their environment at the two and

ask what the solution would be for their specific case. Luckily these guys were smart enough

(or well trained :-)) to leave all options open. Why? I think they share the same opinion as I

have. You never can take this decision without first assessing an environment

thoroughly. There are so many questions you need to ask first before you can decide on what

strategy you are going to use. And even then, in many cases, you will be using both. I

actually had a discussion that evening with a guy that could not believe that at a certain

moment you would only choose for the host-level backup for a certain virtual machine. I

actually do think there are cases when this can be done. Imagine a webserver that is running

in production and where the configuration only changes once and a while. A daily backup ofthe guest should be enough. I think a lot of servers that are running and running and dont
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_7C02072A.png


14/20

contain user data or business data can be protected that way. I mean, who cares that you lose

log files if you are not compliant to something? If you can recover the server quickly when

hes out, thats more important then those log files right? And if they are important, Im sure

that the business then have a solution to archive these logs into an auditing system. But for

the conclusion, this really should be looked at on an individual base and here under are some

points that can be used to make that decision

Hosto Protect or recover the whole machineo Bare Metal Recovery & Item Level Recovery of every VMo Protect non-Windows servers & LOB applications that dont have VSS writerso No granularity of backupo Single DPM license on host, all guests protected

Guesto Protect or recover data specificallyo SQL databaseo Exchangeo SharePointo Fileso No different than protecting the physical servero DPML per Guest

Next topic, how does it work.

As always, you start with an initial replica. After that, this is never done again. What

happens is the following:

1. DPM initiates the backup process2. Using the VSS framework, an application consistent snapshot is created inside the

guest virtual machine

3. A snapshot of the VM is created on the Host (Important mark, use a hardware VSSwriter is you are using a CSV)

4. Then there is a checksum comparison of the VM snapshot with the DPM Replica5. Finally, only the changed blocks are replicated to the DPM Server

Seamless protection of Live Migrating VMs

Yep, youve read it correctly. The backup administrator (I would like to introduce a new titlefor this job, I would like to call him a Business Continuity and Protection Engineer or

Officer what do you think? :-)) doesnt need to care where the actual virtual machine

resides. With live migration, pro-tips in SCVMM and virtualization admins you can imagine

that the placement of a virtual machine is never fixed. And you can also image that the

virtualization admins wont like to update the backup guy every time a machine has

moved. With all the automation you can create these days (SCVMM, Opalis, SCOM) they

will probably dont have a clue either. DPM will know where the virtual machines is, and

protect it from there. If a machine is moved, then DPM will follow it to its new path.

What about Storage Migration? Will that work also? Yep, it will. Again, DPM will follow

the path


15/20

All nice and well, you are protected. But issues happened, and you need to recover. What

are your options?

Restore VM back to original host or clusterProbably the most expected option, system went down, recover to the same location andyoure up and running again.

Restore VM to a different host or clusterA little less expected. Restore the server to another cluster or individual host. Now this

opens options. Take a backup of a production server, and restore it to another host for testing

purposes. Just make sure that your test environment doesnt have the capability to talk to

your production environment. Not sure about the latest patches or service packs? Restore to

another environment, deploy the patches and see if the server starts nicely again.

Item Level Recovery (ILR) to file shareAnd this will become a very much used feature in the future. Mount the virtual machine, get

inside the virtual machine or guest and get the items out of the disk. This can be extremely

handy if you decommissioned a server but forgot to copy one or two files.

What they also discussed is disaster recovery and how to prepare for it, but this will be much

more highlighted in the next part.

Finally they showed some real-life implementations. Ill add the example of a mid-sized

asian hoster in here

CSV Production Environment

This customer has multiple 3-5 node CSV clusters with 30+ VMs on each.

Each CSV has Fiber channel SANDell EqualLogic with H/W provider

Maintained a ratio of 1 CSV per cluster node & VHDs for a VM are co-located in a CSV.

Backup Configuration:

The VM workload mix comprises of almost all Microsoft workloads (Complete Microsoft

Shop).

The average size / VM is ~70 GB.

All VMs are backed up at the host level with DPM 2010 on a daily basis.

35% of servers which require which require granular backup and near continuous RPO

continue to get backed at guest level using DPM 2010, just as earlier in a physical

environment.

Typical DPM 2010 Server Configuration


16/20

Number of Processors on DPM Servers: Intel 2x4 cores

Amount of RAM on DPM Server: 8 GB RAM

DPM 2010 protects a fan in of 3 such CSV clusters

DPM 2010 launch week @ MMS 2010: Part 5: Disaster

recovery and advanced scenarios

This session was given on Friday morning and should have been normally a session from

David Allen (System Center Operations Manager MVPDeloitte) and Sergio De Chiara

(DPM Architect - Microsoft Corporation)

Due to the ash cloud, both guys couldnt make it to Las Vegas so that was quite a

disappointment since I really wanted to see David in action. He owns the blog

http://www.scdpmonline.orgwhich is a great resource for all of you that need to work with

DPM.

Luckily for me, the DPM team decided to throw in another session and the title sounded

promising: Disaster Recovery and Advanced Scenarios.

So session 5 of DPM for me, on a Friday morning. And Jason, if you are reading this, dont

forget the promise you made to the guys that followed all of your sessions Im eagerly

waiting for the book :-)

Anyway, session 5 with Jason Buffington and Vijay Sen.

On the agenda for today:

End-User Backup and Recovery Bare Metal Recovery Disaster Recovery Misc

o Agent Deployment in the Enterpriseo Non-Domain Serverso SCOM Management Pack

So the session starts with some figures about what it cost when disaster strikes for each hour

that the environment is down. All nice figures but a little bit too much oriented on the

American Business. I dont think that I know a company that will loose 6.4 million dollar of

income for each hour that they are out. But no matter how much it cost, when your business

is down, it will cost money, a lot of money, not to mention the image loss or worse, the

compliance issues that you will be facing. So in worst case, how are we going to recover,

and how are we going to do this as fast as possible.

Definition of a disaster:
http://www.scdpmonline.org/http://www.scdpmonline.org/http://www.scdpmonline.org/


17/20

Process of recovering from any natural or man made disaster that results in loss of partial or

complete loss of data center and infrastructure.

What I really liked is that this definition is more then a hurricane, a flood, 9-11 (hey, we were

in Vegas) but that it also includes a disk crash, a stolen laptop and so on. Basically, when

data is lost, no matter in what form, it costs money. So we need to recover.

All right, first topic discussed is dpm2dpm4dr (read: DPM to DPM for Disaster Recovery)

This was already working in DPM 2007, so nothing new here.

However, they increased the possibilities with this:

One-click DPM DR failover and failback Separate schedules per DPM server Chaining support Offsite tapes without courier services Restore servers directly from offsite DPM

Suppose your DPM main server falls out. By using the switch protection option you can

change the recovery to the secondary server. Rebuild or fix the primary DPM server, and use

the same switch to change the protection again to the primary server.

For each DPM server you can use a different schedule, so your primary will probably have a

very tight schedule, but your secondary will be protecting much slower if there is a wan

between them

Chaining support is also one of the new cool features. It basically allows you to do backup to

backup to backup or protect multiple primary DPM servers with one secondary. You can

also start to cross. Your primary server will be acting also as a secondary and visa versa.

Offsite tapes without courier services is how they see it when your secondary server is in an

offsite location. Since the tapes are offsite, it is not necessary to give them with a courier

anymore.

And last but not least Still need to recover after a major failure? Recover straight from the

secondary server.

Many other things were discussed during this session such as post and pre backup scripts
http://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_0874FA55.png


18/20

ScriptingConfig.xml

Path\Script

parameters

"Path\Script

parameters

30

We also saw a great demo of a BMR recovery. Just start your server with a windows cd

(make sure that the network card and disk subsystem is recognized so use a wim file with

injected drivers if necessary), choose recovery mode and connect to the location of the BMRfiles

The definition of a BMR backup is the following:

Backup of all Critical Volumes

Critical Volumes = Boot + System + Volumes hosting files of Server Roles E.g: Boot, System, Active Directory (for DCs)

Used for both System State Recovery and BMR RecoverySo important to remember is to have a different backup for other volumes that contain data!

Hereunder is a great overview screenshot of a BMR recovery


19/20

Till next,

DPM 2010 launch week @ MMS 2010: Part 6: Partner

announcements

In this part I will give an overview of the partner announcements made @ MMS.

As you all know Microsoft has partnered with some companies to provide protection to the

cloud. But there are also partnerships around DPM on an appliance and on virtual tape

library software.

1. Cristalink Firestreamer

Firestreamer is a utility that can create a virtual tape library and virtual tapes based ondifferent kinds of storage such as internal and external hard disk drivers, flash memory, blu-

ray, dvds, and so on.

Very cool solution if you use this in conjunction with DPM2DPM4DR.

For more information:http://www.cristalink.com/Default.aspx

2. i368

i368, a division from Seagate delivers their eVault software together with DPM to support

non-windows environments support. Stuff such as Linux, VMWare, Sun Solaris, HP-UX,

Oracle and so on will be protected by this, creating a solution with is fantastic for windows

(DPM) and at the same time gives you the opportunity to protect other workloads.

The also offer their solution in an appliance, based on a rebranded dell server, with

everything preinstalled on it.

http://www.i365.com/products/data-backup-software/microsoft-backup-recovery/index.html

for more information

3. Iron Mountain
http://www.cristalink.com/Default.aspxhttp://www.cristalink.com/Default.aspxhttp://www.cristalink.com/Default.aspxhttp://www.i365.com/products/data-backup-software/microsoft-backup-recovery/index.htmlhttp://www.i365.com/products/data-backup-software/microsoft-backup-recovery/index.htmlhttp://scug.be/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/scdpm/image_5F00_29D08BF2.pnghttp://www.i365.com/products/data-backup-software/microsoft-backup-recovery/index.htmlhttp://www.cristalink.com/Default.aspx


20/20

Iron Mountain delivers protection to the cloud. With this company, you can protect your data

and sent it straight to the cloud from the DPM console. A very cool solution for off-site

backup.

www.ironmountain.com

Thats it for DPM week 2010. In my humble opinion, the new version of DPM is a must

have for every windows environment. It has improved a lot over the DPM 2007 SP1 solution

which was already a good product. Now it just got better. And because Microsoft realizes

that not everything is Microsoft in your environment, they build strong partnerships with

other companies that leverages the product and allow you to do tape library sharing, so that

you can protect your other apps with whatever you want

To be continued
http://www.ironmountain.com/http://www.ironmountain.com/http://www.ironmountain.com/

DPM 2010 Launch Week

Documents

Transcript of DPM 2010 Launch Week