System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 agent installation fails with error 319

Just a quick heads up on one more new KB article we published today:

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Symptoms

Pushing the System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 (DPM) agent to a target computer fails with the following error:

Install protection agent on name.domain.com failed:
Error 319: The agent operation failed because of a communication error with the DPM Agent Coordinator service on name.domain.com.
Error details: The RPC server is unavailable (0x800706BA)
Recommended action: 1) Verify that name.domain.com is remotely accessible from the DPM server.
2) If a firewall is enabled on name.domain.com, make sure that it is not blocking requests from the DPM server. Refer to the DPM Deployment Guide for more information on configuring the firewall for DPM.

The DPM-Alerts event log displays the following event.

Log Name: DPM Alerts
Source: DPM-EM
Date: <date>
Event ID: 370
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: name.domain.com
Description:

Agent operation failed. (ID: 370)
The agent operation failed because of a communication error with the DPM Agent Coordinator service on name.domain.com. (ID: 319)

Cause

The Windows firewall on the target computer blocked dpmac.exe from accepting incoming network connections.

Resolution

Temporarily disable the Windows Firewall on the target computer when deploying the agent. Once the installation completes the Windows Firewall can be re-enabled.

More Information

Enabling Windows Firewall logging (default location: %windir%\System32\LogFiles\Firewall) may list no blocked packets but you will notice the following event:

The Microsoft Windows Firewall event logs contains the following event.
Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-Windows Firewall With Advanced Security/Firewall
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Windows Firewall With Advanced Security
Date: <date>
Event ID: 2011
Task Category: None
Level: Information
Keywords:
User: LOCAL SERVICE
Computer: name.domain.com
Description:
Windows Firewall was unable to notify the user that it blocked an application from accepting incoming connections on the network.

Reason: Inbound notifications are not enabled
Application Path: C:\windows\microsoft data protection manager\dpm\protectionagents\ac\4.0.1617.0\dpmac.exe
IP Version: IPv6
Protocol: TCP
Port: 5719
Process Id: 3740
User: SYSTEM

Note In some instances the initial attempt to push the agent to the protected server will fail with the error below and subsequent installations fail with the 319 error:

Install protection agent on name.domain.com failed:
Error 347: An error occurred when the agent operation attempted to create the DPM Agent Coordinator service on name.domain.com.
Error details: Security must be initialized before any interfaces are marshalled or unmarshalled. It cannot be changed one initialized.
Recommended action: Verify that the Agent Coordinator service on name.domain.com is responding, if it is present. Review the error details, take the appropriate action, and then retry the agent operation.

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For the most current version of this article please see the following:

2621989: System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 agent installation fails with error 319

J.C. Hornbeck | System Center Knowledge Engineer

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