System Center Data Protection Manager

DPM Upgrade Advisor

Hey All,

Microsoft just released an excel document called the SCDPM Upgrade Advisor

http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/archive/2010/02/26/upgrade-advisor-for-dpm-2010-now-available.aspx

This document will give you guidelines in how to upgrade SCDPM 2007 installations to DPM 2010 installations, even if your DPM 2007 is running on 32-bit OS.

Looks great and with a lot of options to choose, even when you have a secondary DPM server you can choose this option.

Cheers,

Mike

Client-protection: create a protection group and initial synchronization

Hey All,

Last post, I’ve installed remotely a client agent to a workstation in another domain and over VPN.  Now it is time to create a protection group with a policy and do the first synchronization.  Again I want to see how it will react when I do this when the workstation is under a heavy load.  I figured that I might need to do this when a user is working at home or in a hotel and so I need to know if the synchronization will work.

During the first synchronization, I worked on the laptop and I was doing the following tasks:

* VPN open

* Outlook open

* MSN and Office Messenger Open

* Tweetdeck open

* Listening at an internet radio

* Downloading large files from the Microsoft Connect site

* Many programs open and about 30 internet pages open

But first is first, let’s create a protection group

On the second screen, I choose for Clients instead of servers

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On the next screen, I can select my clients.  The good part here is that if you select clients that don’t have an agent yet, you can install them now, and those who have an agent but aren’t connected yet to the DPM server will be attached.  In my case, the client already has an agent and is attached, so I just select my client.  Because I installed the agent, it is now visible in the list, although it is in another domain.

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Here it becomes very interesting. I can start on this screen by creating inclusions and exclusions for my clients.

Here you can see that I have included My Documents but excluded music and temporary internet files

You can add your own directories to it but you already receive a nice list of possibilities

Also, on that screen is an option where you can allow your users to add directories themselves that need to be protected.  But if you have excluded a folder and they still want to protect it, they will get a notification that it is not possible (see later in this post)

And you also have the possibility to exclude certain file types

I have to choose for Short term protection since I don’t have a tape drive in my test environment

Now this will be one were a lot of discussion will be.  How many times a day do you want to synchronize, what will be the retention range, how long before a disconnected client needs to start alerting?

For the tests I kept it at a minimum but these settings will need to be thought through very good in a real-life situation.

This is the alerting option, as said, it will need some serious thinking what the setting will be here.  Is 14 days (the default) enough?  When you are away for 2 weeks on holiday, then the 14 days is not enough because you are then away from the office for about 18 days (first and last weekend included), so every company will need to think this through.

Now I need to chose my storage.  For this test I will not co-locate my data because I don’t have enough disk space for this in my test environment.  What I have read about it is that you choose co-location from the moment you have 10 clients.  If you are below, you better split-up so that you don’t lose too much storage.

I also let the Automatically grow the volume option on.  This is a very handy new feature and many DPM administrators that are now using DPM 2007 will be very happy with it.  Of course this is a risk as your volumes can keep growing until you are out of disk space, but a good backup admin (I actually prefer Protection and DR admin for this product :-) will check the reports on a regular base so that should not cause any problems.

The summary, which includes the link to Optimize Performance which I will probably discussing later on

And finally the success.

So I finally started the synchronization and waited, waited, waited for a very long time.

Some other screenshots:

Trying to add the music folder to the protected items

DPM Synchronizing

Final Conclusion and lessons learnt

The process seems to be working great.  Although I took it through a heavy test-drive everything worked flawlessly.

The only minor point was the initial synchronization.  It took about half an hour to synchronize 170 MB.  But then again, I was pushing the limits.  But I needed to know how DPM would react because you might need to do this once, and 170 MB of changes will occur on client workstation. 

Cheers,

Mike

Getting the Client-protection working

Hey All,

One of the exiting features of DPM 2010 is the improved client protection of workstations.  In this post, I’ll give some more information about it.  To make it a bit tricky, I decided to try to install the agent on a workstation
(windows 7, 32-bit) that resides

a. In a different domain (but a fully trusted domain)

b. Is not in the office but connected through a VPN, sitting at home

Since I assume that client protection will be getting more and more attention from companies, I decided to test it out thoroughly.  Both for the installation and the first synchronization I decided not to follow the guidelines but really try to do the worst scenario.

1. The installation

Installing the client is the same as installing a server.  Manuals from the beta (before the RC) mentioned that I should install it manually (or through solutions such as SCCM or SCE) but I thought that it also would be possible to do this through the UI.

I start by taking the "install agent” option since I didn’t installed it yet.  Note also the attach agents that can be used when an agent is installed manually.

Now I need to select the workstation.  He will only list the workstations and servers from the domain that the DPM server resides in, so to connect  to my workstation on another domain, I had to type in the FQDN name in the box

Here I can give in the credentials for a user that has administrative rights on the workstation in that domain

I decided here not to restart the workstation automatically, instead, I wanted to test if it really is necessary to restart which could be a killer in very large environments.

Finally, the summary and ready to install.  Now one little note drew my attention: The computer may momentarily lose network connectivity during installation.

Since the workstation is on a client vpn, this could be tricky :-)

Also, before you can actually do this, you need to make sure that your firewall is configured correctly.  I failed the first time because my firewall was wrong configured.

And then the screen of success came.  Now I didn’t see the client lose network connectivity, and if it did, then it had to be very short because my VPN tunnel didn’t drop so that seems to be working.

Now let’s look a bit at the changes on the client.

First, I found two new services

Second, here’s how the Client UI looks:

This client already has a policy, but how that works I will explain in next post.

Lessons learnt:

* It is possible to install the agent on a workstation through the GUI from DPM itself.

* You can do it over a VPN connection

* Windows 7 doesn’t need to reboot afterwards

* The DPM client UI will demonstrate a small icon in the notification area after the reboot, but you can start it by starting manually the DPM UI without rebooting

* In windows 7, when you want to see this icon, you need to change the notification settings

And this is the icon, and more information when you right-click on it

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Last picture is from a client that is disconnect from the server

Allright, next post: Create a protection group and do the first synchronization, over the VPN of course :-)

Cheers,

Mike

Hotfix: Dynamic Disk Hotfix

Hey All,

Microsoft released a hotfix for potential problems with Windows Server 2008 systems.

Could be an important one if you are experiencing issues with dynamic disks, which is what DPM uses.

Hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962975

Information: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/archive/2010/02/18/dynamic-disk-hotfix.aspx

Cheers,

Mike

SCUG invites you to “What's new in DPM 2010” (Mar 03, 2010)

What's new in DPM 2010

Microsoft released the public beta for Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010. Attend this webcast to learn about Data Protection Manager 2010 and the product features that are causing excitement in the IT community! We will walk you through most of the new features in DPM 2010 and the enhancements that were made to the Data Protection Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) solution, which is protecting Windows-based application servers and file servers today.

Speaker: Mike Resseler

I'm an Implementation Consultant working for Ferranti Computer Systems NV.  I am happily married and have two lovely daughters.  I like all the system center products because I believe they can be an added value for managing an infrastructure.

My Blog http://scug.be/blogs/mike/

Agenda Wednesday, March 3, 2010

• 18:00 Registration and lunch
• 18:45 Welcome
• 19:00 What's new in DPM 2010
• 21:00 Q&A and drink

More info can be found on http://scug.be/content/Events.aspx

DPM 2010 RC: After the Upgrade

Hey All,

Just to let you know…

Since I did an upgrade yesterday from the beta to RC, I now have two instances of SQL

MSDPMV3BETA1EVAL and MSDPM2010RCEVAL

After searching through the newsgroups, it got confirmed that you can throw away the BETA instance

Cheers,

Mike

DPM 2010: Upgrade from beta to RC

Hey All,

Download of the DPM 2010 RC is finished, uploaded to my test server so here goes:

Documentation?

First thing noticed, there is no documentation with it so I will have to do it with the older documentation from the beta.  Not so good since there are additional features in the RC and I was hoping on reading about it.

So I figured I just start and see where I get :-)

Installation

Ah, maybe here is some information… So let’s try it out.  I’ve looked at Review System Requirements,View Release Notes and Read Setup Help but they all pointed to DPM 2007 information.  So let’s go for the Install Data Protection Manager link then.

First error, so let’s fix this first.  Apparently I was still working with the CTP version of Windows Powershell 2.0 so I had to remove it first.

Second try.

Since I uninstalled Powershell, the intstallation wizard is enabling it now.  This takes a long time… but finally

Of course, protection jobs cannot run during the upgrade and you need to upgrade your agents immediately afterwards but this you get each time you do an upgrade with DPM.  Press Next to continue

So the prerequisite checker is running, and I seem to be not passed

So here are my prerequisites missing:

KB 962975: Dynamic Disks are marked as “Invalid” on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista when you bring the disks online, take the disks offline, or restart the computer if Data Protection Manager is installed.

KB 975759: An application or service that uses a file system filter driver may experience function failure on a computer that is running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Server 2008

and finally Windows Management Framework Core package (Windows PowerShell 2.0 and WinRM 2.0)

A reboot is needed, so we will have to start from scratch again.  Lessons learnt, take these hotfixes with you when you need to install DPM 2010

So I ran back through my setup and came back to the prerequisites screen

Now everything is ok so let’s continue

Since I am upgrading, and the installation used to had a dedicated SQL instance, I will reuse it

Give the password for the local accounts that will be used.

Choose whether you want to use the Microsoft Update or not

Customer improvement experience can’t be changed during the RC, this will be possible in the RTM version of course

Upgrade has been successfully… but I have a warning tab, so let’s read

Seems logical :-)

Allright, let’s start the console and go to management.

I need to update an agent

The same warning that you always receive when upgrading something. Any running jobs will fail, and you need to do a consistency check afterwards

A big difference between 2007 is that I didn’t had to run through a wizard.  I just clicked OK on the warning and the upgrade starts.

This is the error that you get when you have an agent with a previous version

The upgrade however failed

According to the newsgroups, I wasn’t the only one with this problem.  After a while (the second time) it worked.

New Agent Version

The new agent version is now 3.0.7558.0

Cheers,

Mike

DPM interesting day

Hey All,

A very interesting day today and yesterday as I have seen many interesting information passing by.  Instead of creating a post for each of them, I will put them all together here.

First, as said in a previous post, DPM 2010 RC is out and I’m already starting to play with it. 

Second, the DPM team has released a list of the Tested hardware VSS provider that are tested and found compatible with DPM for protecting virtual machines deployed on Clustered Shared Volumes.

See http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/archive/2010/02/05/tested-hardware-vss-provider-table.aspx for more information.

Another post is written on Hyper-V and protecting it with DPM 2010 beta.  Some great powershell scripts are posted there for auto protecting your new virtual machines also on the Secondary DPM if you have a situation like that.

See http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/archive/2010/02/08/hyper-v-protection-with-dpm-2010-beta-how-to-automatically-protect-new-virtual-machines-on-a-secondary-dpm.aspx

Finally, there is a webcast about Reducing IT Costs in the Datacenter with System Center which I’m going to try to view as soon as possible because this sounds very interesting.

Check http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2010/02/09/reducing-it-costs-in-the-datacenter-with-system-center.aspx for the webcast

Till next, which will be about doing an upgrade from the DPM 2010 beta to RC

Cheers,

Mike

SCDPM 2010 RC is available!!!!

Hey all,

It is finally there, check out the post from Jason Buffington… Time to download :-)

http://blogs.technet.com/jbuff/archive/2010/02/09/data-protection-manager-2010-release-candidate-now-available.aspx

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Mike

Troubleshoot Sharepoint Recoveries

Hey All,

Just saw a nice video about troubleshooting Sharepoint Recoveries with system center data protection manager 2007.

The video is created by Shane Brasher who is a Senior DPM Support Escalation Engineer.

You can find the video @ http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/archive/2010/02/03/troubleshooting-sharepoint-recoveries-for-dpm.aspx

In the Video, Shane demonstrates two common failures and how to find information about them.

One of these errors is not enough disk space for the recovery.  It is indeed a fact that to recover something from sharepoint you need to recover the entire site.  And this is sometimes overlooked by administrators.  Both on the recovery farm as the production farm you need to have enough space to recover.

The error you will receive is ID 2035 and can be found in the DPM UI, eventviewer and the MSDPMCurr.errlog

And finally, it is also found back in the trace logs when you need to make them for Microsoft Support.

The other error he explained is a little more difficult to understand.  What he did was recover a site but to an alternate site.

The error shown now was ID 32005: The system cannot find the file specified.

Again, this error is visible in the DPM UI, eventviewer and the MSDPMCurr.errorlog but just shows this cryptic notification.

The log you need here is the WSSCmdLetsWrapperCurr.errlog where there is a much better answer about this error.

It states that you are trying to restore a site to another location which has the wrong template so be aware.

Anyway, a must seen video for all you DPM admins out there.

Cheers,

Mike

Sharepoint 2010 and SystemCenter

Hey All,

Just attended a live meeting on System Center and Sharepoint 2010 and as usual, it was looking very promising again.

Although this is the blog about Data Protection Manager I will briefly tell also about Operations Manager and Virtualization but my main focus will be on DPM.

Sharepoint is a collaboration product that is used in many companies.  Many IT administrators will acknowledge that the product has become an essential asset in a business environment, but they will also acknowledge that it is a hell of a product to maintain.  This is basically because of the nature of the product.  Many team sites are created, project sites, document libraries and so on and for each type there is security and so on… To keep track on this, is very difficult for an IT admin.  It even becomes more difficult when a user has deleted a document, site or whatever and you are in charge of recovering it.

Another big issue with Sharepoint is managing the different farms.  When you only have one farm, you have one site where you can manage it, but when you have multiple, it’s getting more difficult to maintain it. 

System Center should be the answer to that, beginning with Operations Manager 2007 and the new Management Pack for Sharepoint 2010.

Operations Manager

This management pack has some great advantages.  To start with, the product team really has listened to the customers and the feedback that they got.  In the meeting, they explained that the new Management Pack was designed specifically to manage your entire sharepoint infrastructure (which can be multiple farms) from one console.  And this is great, even fantastic. And they went further.  The new management pack will be able to monitor the logical entity of your infrastructure.  This means that you will now have the possibility to monitor your SLA’s about sharepoint.  When one server is down, but another one is up that does the same thing, your sharepoint infrastructure will be healthy for your SLA.  And that is exactly what we want.

Check out the next pictures

And there’s more.  They have reduced the alerting noise in the management pack.  All common component monitoring such as SQL and IIS are disabled by default.  Why?  Because you will probably have IIS management pack and SQL management pack in your environment anyway.  And if not, you still can enable these monitors.  Important here is that you still will see that the sharepoint infrastructure is down, but not 5 times anymore when the problem is SQL oriented.  I’m not sure if this is correct, but I think the makers of this management pack listened very carefully to the Exchange Management Pack programmers :-)

Also, they have added all features of sharepoint (search, project server, Office web apps…) into 1 management pack and into one view.  So for all you OpsMgr admins out there… it will become easier to “deploy” a view to your sharepoint admins.  Again, cool stuff.

Now what are the changes between 2007 and 2010

As you can see in the picture… A lot.  A lot more monitors, less rules, more classes.  All great news, but what more?  Less reports… Huh?  Less reports?  This is not good.  However, the team promised us that they kept only the reports that mattered.  All the other reports are SQL data, IIS data and those reports are in the other management packs. 

A new feature is the SPHA rules.  SPHA stands for SharePoint Health Analyzer and are standard in the Sharepoint product.  The good thing here is that you can create your own rules in Sharepoint (by a Sharepoint admin for example) and that Operations Manager automatically will add this to its management pack.  Again, a very nice feature and one that Sharepoint admins will love to have.

Virtualization

The last topic off the day was Virtualization but was only touched lightly.  Nevertheless I’m gonna give you the slide here before I start with my favorite topic ;-) SCDPM

Data Protection Manager

And this was presented by Jason Buffington (yep, him again :-)).  And Jason demonstrated (this guy really loves demo’s, even with all the risks :-)) in short what we can expect for Sharepoint 2010 protection with DPM 2010.

Following screenshots demonstrate the difference between DPM 2007 (w. Sharepoint 2007) and DPM 2010 (w. Sharepoint 2010)

To make a long story short… While you need a recovery farm today, you will be recovering single documents straight to the production infrastructure tomorrow.  And you will have all the possibilities for Disaster Recovery and so on too (see my previous post for more explanation on this).

As always, DPM 2010 for sharepoint proves to be another great backup solution, but not only a backup solution, it will be much more then that.  The workload will be perfectly protected through DPM with quick recoveries, automatic consistency checks and SLA’s that will be easily met.

And it’s getting better.  If you have a management solution that automatically deploys a DPM agent onto a new server (think Dynamic Data Center) and you deploy a new server that is part of the Sharepoint infrastructure, DPM will automatically recognize this and add it to the protection group.  No more “forgetting” about the new server…

You really got to see it in action… Jason, if you read this, try convincing your boss to come over to Belgium for a meeting with the Belgium System Center User Group ;-)

My conclusion

The different teams really have listened to the remarks of the customers, influencers and MVP’s.  And that’s a fantastic thing.  Managing your Sharepoint infrastructure will become easier, more straightforward and better protected then ever.  In the next months, when Sharepoint 2010 will go live in many companies, a lot of admins will need to discuss the System Center products to their peers also, because implementing a solution is one thing, maintaining it is different.

Will this be perfect?  Probably not, but since the system center products are more “frameworks”, you can easily adapt it to your own needs, and don’t forget, the product teams actually listen to the feedback, so contact them if necessary.

Till next time.

Cheers,

Mike