Over the last few weeks I have managed to setup most of the elements of Systems Center Essentials 2010 (SCE) and having put some time and effort into this I want to ensure my work is saved, in case I break it or my demo environment breaks.  Being a DBA and knowing that SCE uses a number of databases to store configuration, update progress, events etc. I thought this would be fairly straightforward.  However with power comes responsibility and in the case of SCE this means security and specifically certificates.  There are certificates to allow Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) used by SCE to apply updates to managed computers, there’s encryption of the SCE databases.

The definitive guide on what and how to back in SCE is here, but I wanted to show a backup in terms of restoring it and my plan for disaster recovery would be to have a new virtual machine (VM) with a clean install of SCE and SQL Server.

Things to note from the video..

• I created a blank virtual hard disk(VHD) in Hyper-V for my backups and attached it to the SCE virtual machine (BTW the VM can’t be running to do this)
• I also backed up the reporting services database, and I also backed up the certificate used to protect reporting services. This isn’t necessary unless you have you’re own reports in there as a clean install of SCE will include all the reports it uses.
• In the real world you would want to backup the group policy that SCE uses , but also in the real world you would have a backups of your domain controller anyway.

Next week I’ll attach the backup VHD to the VM withe the clean install of SCE and SQL Server on and restore SCE to the state it was in

In the meantime, If you want to try SCE yourself it’s included in  the TechNet Subscriptions  here or you can get a time bombed trial version here.