Please join us today - Wednesday, December 4th at 9:30AM Pacific - for an updated overview of DPM2007.

We'll be going over most of the core features and everything you need to know to get started with your own evaluations of the new Microsoft backup and recovery solution.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032355427&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Okay, with DPM's launch now complete, I am committed to getting some geek-fun back into my world.  And it started with the epiphany that the video projector that I use for my gaming supports 1080 and I wasn't using it to its fullest capability.

FYI - if you haven't read a clear and complete explanation of 480, 720, 1080i and 1080p, I encourage you to check out this article on understanding resolutions.

I have two goals before ending 2007:

1. Get my gamerscore above 5000.  I started my Thanksgiving break around 4300, so I want to finish a few titles that I have been sitting on (and get the points) - and then frankly get rid of a few of the games that I won't want to play again.  Thanks to my friends at the four local GameStop's within one mile of my house, I am sure I can find something to start off the new year.
2. Go High-Def in my movies.  If my projector supports 1080, why am I still buying normal DVD's for new titles?!

As a happy Xbox360 owner twice over, it was a no-brainer to pick up the HD-DVD player add-on. 

My Xbox360 is already configured for 5.1 sound and 1080 video.  The setup was easy and the results are fantastic.  It has two cables - a USB feed to the Xbox360 (and it provides two new USB ports on the HD unit) and a power cord.  Insert a DVD that loads some extensions to the Xbox dashboard and I was done.  It even included an Xbox360 Universal Remote which is a nice touch to easily take me from "gamer" to "movie watcher" right out of the box.

The first HD-DVD that I purchased was combo with HD-DVD on one side and "regular" DVD on the other.  The combo thing is way awesome, especially since I tend to be the DVD-Library for my family and friends. After watching Evan Almighty with my wife and kids (great movie BTW), I replayed a few of our favorite scenes for my wife and then played the same scenes from the DVD-side on a 480p DVD player - and my wife formally gave me her blessing to upgrade our DVD collection.   SCORE !!!  (fyi, "blessing" does not mean "permission", I have to be clear on that to maintain my man-card)

There were two things that slightly perplexed me with the Xbox360 HD-DVD add-on:

I would have liked a power-switch.  In thinking "green" and because I have enough power/cooling problems in my world already, a toggle on the player would have been nice.  On any given week, my family and I will spend 30+ hours gaming and watch 1 or 2 movies.  Instead, I plugged its power into a toggle switch ($3) before going into the power strip itself, so it's a non-issue.  But hey, I'm a server guy, not a consumer peripherals engineer, so I might be over thinking this.

The player comes with a free copy of King Kong on HD DVD.  I totally get the idea of including a movie with the player, so you can immediately experience the benefits of High-Def -- and I like free stuff like everybody else.  But King Kong isn't my kind of movie.  It doesn't seem reasonable to do a mail-order exchange or whatever; so mine will likely sit on a shelf or something.  Speaking of mail-order, while I don't plan on watching King Kong, there are some good ones being offered in a promotion for five free HD-DVD's with the purchase of the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player.  That alone, almost pays for the player. 

I noticed at least one stand-alone HD-DVD player also offering King Kong, so maybe it's just a HD-DVD thing.  Or maybe, everyone else's first instinct upon getting higher resolution graphics is to watch CGI monsters wooing fair maidens in a story that reminds us how man often forces its way over nature, how greed and ego put something unique from nature on display for profit, how crowds behave irrationally and often our first instinct is to kill what we don't understand.  Oh well.

But here is my quandary - and I would love to hear your comments to this post. 

There are some studios, like Disney and Sony (of course) that are only shipping Blu-Ray.  So, while I'd rather have watched the new Ratatouille in High-Def, we had to watch on "normal" DVD instead.  Disney got their $14 out of me, but they could have gotten $24 if they had supported both HD types.

Of course, Sony is only Blu-Ray, so that takes SpiderMan3 and Fantastic Four Silver Surfer off my Christmas list.

So now I am struggling with the "obvious" need for a Blu-Ray player.  (minor sarcasm intended)

When a movie is available on both HD formats (yes, it's seldom) - HD-DVD is an easy choice for me, particularly if it is in combo-format.  Someday, either we'll see mainstream DVD players for both formats (< $300, hopefully).  Or maybe someone will produce a dual-sided media for either format (which will cost me my low-def DVD side, but ok).  Not really,  But it doesn't seem that this war will be over soon, so I think that I am willing to buy both for now.

But then I looked at the price of a Blu-Ray player, and even the cheap ones aren't that cheap.  To add insult to injury, I can actually buy a PS3 that has a Blu-Ray player in it for about same price as the low-end Blu-Ray DVD players.  I personally see no need to ever have a PS3.  But I think it is humorous that Sony charges the same for their low-end player as they do their premium game system.  From my twisted perspective and rationale, a PS3 is therefore really "just" a DVD player and the other components have no value (to me).

And so I might spend $400 on a Blu-Ray player (no, I won't get the PS3), plus then I'll need a switcher for the component signals going to my projector (add $100 plus cables).

Now, my easy $179 movie upgrade is starting to look like a $1000 Christmas.  And for that, I likely will need to get "permission" ... not just a "blessing".

So, what are you my fellow data-protection and storage saavy folks doing in High-Def?

We are done ... and so am I.

I have three more speaking slots to do today and, as the saying goes, "I am leaving it all on the field."

MGT18-IS - Advanced Features of DPM 2007 - Interactive Q&A

After a few sleep-deprived nights, we are starting today with a "Everything else we you haven't heard about yet" (hopefully, the sarcasm and pain is coming through).  After four days of sessions and booth conversation, we had a pretty good read on the hot topics yet to be addressed with DPM, so Karandeep and I did an interactive version of the TechNet webcast material from last month.  It wasn't planned that way, but we needed slides for most of the deeper questions.  If you want to hear the similar content, check out last month's webcast:

TechNet Webcast - Advanced Features of DPM 2007

MGT01-ILL - How to protect Exchange Server with DPM 2007 - instructor led lab (repeat)

Due to great pre-registration of the first session, we repeated this session.  Admittedly, I was starting to fade, so I convinced Karandeep to stick around.  And as the session had lots of familiar faces from the week's earlier breakouts and Q&A's, we had lots of folks with lots of interest in putting their hands on it and ask some tough questions that were within and outside the lab's topic.

FYI>  When IT Forum is over and we have recovered from Launch Week, my intent is to post the lab's on TechNet's vLab portal, so folks at home can try the labs themselves.  Look for the link on the DPM homepage and a blog post (eta December/January).

SRV11-IS - Data Protection and Virtualization - interactive Q&A (repeat)

Also back by popular demand, Edwin Yuen and I repeated this session.  Admittedly, it was the last session on the last day of a very full week, so attendance was somewhat lack-luster.  But the session went well and now we are done.

Final score for Day 5 - the last day

Up by 7AM - onsite by 8:30.  Taught three sessions - and headed to the airport.  An overnight connection in Paris and I'll be home on Saturday afternoon.

I hope you enjoyed these daily blog's.  I did them for a few reasons:

FOR ME - DPM has been a 23 month journey and I wanted to chronicle it.  As I've shared before, my family and I made some significant life changes to join Microsoft - and for me, it was about this particular product.  Other doors are opening for me, but these first two years culminate with this week.

FOR MY DPM TEAMMATES - particularly for the amazing DPM development team and the others at Microsoft who are devoted to this product.  Hopefully, through these posts, you have experienced some of the excitement that occurred during launch week.  You've built a phenomenal product that customers and partners all seem to agree meets or exceeds their needs.  This Microsoft backup solution for Microsoft workloads will change the way that the world backs up and recovers data in Windows environments, so you should be proud of what you accomplished - and launched this week.

FOR EVERYONE ELSE - Along with the excitement and some technical insight in the product, I hope you enjoyed a behind the scenes look at what goes into a product launch from Microsoft.  DPM compared to Windows Server 2008 or SQL Server is small but still significant.  I can only imagine what an inside look inside the upcoming Windows Server launch would look like.  Maybe I'll do that someday.  In the meantime, look for more technical, partner-centric and/or customer success stories from DPM's bloggers as we move ahead.  

Thanks for reading

As we come into the home stretch, I have three speaking engagements today and three more tomorrow.

When asked why I don't share these with other speakers, my answer is two-fold:

1) I came to Microsoft 23 months ago for DPM2007, so I want to put my own fingerprints all over this event.  That may not be entirely logical or even wholly prudent, but it's honest.

2) Pragmatically, we sign up for these events many months in advance, but only just finished doing the airlifts and training of other teams to the degree that I would ask one to give a conference session.  But they are wired now.

So either way, IT Forum 2007 is the last show that I will do this much speaking - including 2 keynote demo setups, 1 keynote demo, 2 technical breakout sessions, 2 instructor-led lab's, and 4 open Q&A sessions. 

In 2008, I will share the privilege with the folks that I have been working with over the past several weeks to get them ready to evangelize and sell DPM - namely our Storage TS community and the TechNet IT Pro Evangelists that are all scattered around the world and are all very excited (and knowledgeable) about DPM 2007.

MGT01-ILL - How to protect Exchange Server with DPM 2007 - Instructor Led Lab

If you haven't done an ILL at a Microsoft event - you really should. 

• It makes a thorough product demonstration even better, because you get to see the instructor do it, you try it, and then you experiment afterwards.
• You get to your hands-on lab while also shouting out questions and hearing deep answers, and hearing the answers to questions that you haven't thought of yet.

Admittedly, the DPM ILL wasn't my favorite of the DPM events this week.  The manual needs a refresh and we will be putting in more depth for some additional exercises.  This is the last major event where the DPM software isn't in flux.  For MMS 2007 (March), we were doing lab's against early pre-Beta 2.  For Tech-Ed, we were doing beta 2 that had literally just shipped.  For IT Forum, the images had just gotten upgraded from RC to RTM.  So now, with the demo VPC's stabilized, I promise to provide a richer manual for self-study and lab exercises.  The class was fine, scoring around 7 of 9, which isn't bad - but usually DPM scores are much higher than the average, so I recognize we need to do more.

MGT315 - How to protect SQL Server with DPM 2007 - technical breakout session

I love this class - because SQL DBA's understand why DPM is so cool - even more than some other segments.  It was slightly smaller than I hoped, with only a little over a hundred folks - but I was competing with lots of new SQL Server 2008 sessions, so I totally understand. 

If you were unable to watch this session (or not at IT Forum), we recorded this class at the last US Tech-Ed. 

TechEd session - How to protect SQL Server with DPM 2007

The slides this time were a little prettier, and I added a comparison of 3rd party SQL Compressed Backup mechanisms to DPM that I had blogged last month

Comparing DPM 2007 to 3rd party compressed DB backup methods

But otherwise, this was the same session - and it turned out really well.  My demonstration gear is already protecting both SQL Server 2005 and 2008 (CTP), as well as SharePoint, which is usually relevant for SQL audiences.  And the session scored really, really well - 8.2 out of 9.  Likely my best contribution for the week.

MGT05-IS - Ask us anything about Data Protection - open Q&A

For this session, I teamed up with my friend and colleague, Karandeep Anand.  Karan has been my single best resource since I joined Microsoft 23 months ago - and who I learn from before I speak on DPM.  He's also been my Q&A backup for my deepest sessions over the past two years and is a true, golden asset to Microsoft around DPM and backup, in general.  I still learn something solid - every time he and I do a session together.

We covered Bare Metal Recovery and PowerShell scripting, quite a bit.  Plus every other possible permutation of what you could do with DPM.

Final Score for Day 4

This was a personally challenging day - with an interactive lab, a deep-dive session and an open Q&A.  My brain is truly mush.  Up by 7AM (five hours of sleep) - onsite from 8:30A until 8P.  Tonight's dinner was with my friends from Equalogic, who have some great iSCSI solutions that pair very nicely with DPM 2007.  They also announced their DPM solutions this week.  Back at my hotel by 11P and after some more PowerPoint and a little email, in bed by 1AM.

We trained around 200 folks - and are starting to see some familiar faces.  It's exciting to see that with the final release of the product, there are customers who are attending multiple DPM sessions as one of their intentional tracks of study at an event.

We are half-way through Launch Week ... and things are continuing to stay exciting.

The booth is continually swamped - and while this will sound bias, it is one the busiest booths in the Microsoft pavilion.  Yeah, I know that's like saying that my kid was the best actor in the school play.  Yes, I am bias.  But I also can count - two customers in this booth, one customer in that booth, four customers in my booth.  Sometimes, your kid really is the best actor in the play.  And at IT Forum, DPM's booth really is one of the busiest in the Microsoft pavilion that I saw. 

But that makes sense, if you think about it:

If you are a SQL Server specialist at IT Forum, you went by the SQL areas - learned new stuff about SQL Server 2008 and BI, and you also came by the DPM booth to pick up the "How to protect SQL Server with DPM" datasheet or whitepaper.  We have a technical breakout session on that topic that DBA's would have heard about already, and there is a Hands-On Lab with the same specialization, as well.  FYI, we've put a lot of effort into helping empower SQL Server DBA's to be successful doing their own backups with DPM - so there are lots of good resources at:

www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/DPM/workloads/SQL.mspx

If you are an Exchange expert at IT Forum, you went by the Exchange area ... and then picked up DPM's "How to protect Exchange Server with DPM" datasheet or whitepaper.  This one especially, since we also did a breakout on that topic today.  PS, yes, we have lots of good resources for Exchange admin's doing their own backups too, at:

www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/DPM/workloads/EXCHANGE.mspx

If you are a Windows Server administrator, DPM has a story for you. 

If you are a SharePoint person, DPM is absolutely the right way to back it up. 

If you are a Virtualization person, DPM is the right way to back those up and we have sessions on that topic too. 

If you are a security specialist, no anti-virus / firewall (proactive) solution is complete without a reactive backup/recovery mechanism, so you came by DPM as well. 

And if you are a systems management person, you came by most of the System Center booths which includes DPM.  No matter what server infrastructure component that you are interested in, you likely went there in there in the Microsoft area - and then DPM's booth, too. 

So yes, at IT Forum, reasonably and logically speaking ... my kid was the best in the school play.

MGT317 - How to protect Exchange Server with Data Protection Manager 2007 - technical breakout session

This class really rocked although it had the potential not to.  You see, every night after the conference is over, I have to move my demonstration hardware from one classroom to the next.  So, last night, I moved my equipment over and spun up everything (see day-0 blog for a description of my demo gear).  The demo really needs to run well in advance so that we have lots of recovery points to demonstrate.  The session before mine finished early, so when I came up to the podium in my relaxed and prepared way, I found that someone after me had unplugged my demo servers for their own.  

A twisted rationale of "Do unto others as you would have them do done unto you" rang through my head.  Obviously, they were modeling that golden rule and had demonstrated that they in fact wanted me to unplug their gear.  They had done it to me and I should just follow their example, right?!?  (Sorry, you can tell I am still bitter).

So, I began finding extra power plugs and spinning up the hosts. Then the DC.  Then the Exchange servers.  Then the other workloads.  And finally the DPM server.  I always show multiple workloads being protected.  Except for the very largest of corporations, almost every administrator manages more than one platform.  And besides, it makes the demo more fun for me. 

I also queued up a PowerPoint screenshot-demo deck just in case.  When you hard-kill a complete VPC domain, you run lots of risk of something not coming up again on the first try - and I wasn't going to get a chance to troubleshoot.  Literally, I was two slides into to session PowerPoint presentation before the green lights clicked on the demo and I knew whether I would be showing live machines or not.  PS> TechEd deep-tech audiences hate non-demo sessions.  It's too close to marketing.

FYI, I did an early version of this material as a webcast during the beta program, which you can watch at:

On-demand Webcast - How to protect Exchange Server with DPM 2007 beta

The session and demo went fine - we taught around 220 people - and in fact, it was one of the highest rated sessions for the day. 

SRV401 - Windows Server 2008 Deep-Dive for File Services and Storage

I didn't actually teach this class - but i attended it since after this week, those will also be topics in my job function. 

As I might have mentioned in the past, my team is the Windows Storage Solutions team, which includes DPM, but also Storage Server, WUDSS and even parts of the Windows Server file workload.  We merged teams together back in July, but I have tried to stay focused on DPM  until we launched.  After this week, I will take on the content/ technical readiness for those functions as well.  So, I attended Ralf Schnell's session.  I used to be a Microsoft MVP in Storage, so I thought I understood all of the file/storage capabilities from Win2003.  But in looking at Win2008, there is obviously lots of cool new things that I get to start evangelizing next year.

There were some other sessions, booth duty, partner meetings, etc.  And then I moved my demo hardware from today's classroom to tomorrow's.  That proctor knows about today's snafu and she promises to watch out for my gear.  But as for today's DPM launch blog, that is it.

Final score for Day 3

Woke up at 6:30 - onsite from 8A through 8P - a great dinner with my friends from Dell, who this week announced a series of Dell Data Protection Appliances, with DPM 2007 pre-installed on Windows Storage Server / Dell NX1950's (more on that in separate blogs in the future). 

Add in a great technical breakout session with good scores and lots of attendees.  We returned from dinner by 11:30P and I worked on tomorrow's PowerPoint presentation until 2AM.

Things keep going well for DPM at IT Forum.

The booth stays swamped with interested folks - and we have a great team of up to 4 DPM experts at the booth at a time -- and they are staying busy the whole time !

From my perspective, today was about the first technical sessions:

MGT-02-PD - Check out the new DPM 2007

This was a 45-minute product demo with one PPT slide in front.  We covered server install and configuration, setting up protection, doing recovery and even a little reporting.   Thankfully, no gremlins invaded my demo - so everything ran really well.

As of the the posting of this blog - it's the #3 rated Product Demo (PD) at IT Forum - so people seem pleased with the product (and maybe the presenter too) :-)

SRV11-IS - Interactive chalk-talk Q&A on Data Protection and Virtualization

My good friend, Edwin Yuen, and I talked about how some of the intersection points between two of the coolest technologies in IT - Virtualization and Storage.  if you're at Barcelona, we are doing a repeat of the session on Friday afternoon.  If not, you might want to visit our recent TechNet webcast on a similar topic.

Edwin is truly a rockstar as a presenter, and has an awesome understanding in Virtualization.  If you haven't learned about System Center Virtual Machine Manager or any other Virtualization topic from Edwin, you definitely want to make the time.

Some of the intersection points that we discussed included:

• How DPM 2007 protects virtual machines hosted on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
• Enabling partners to use virtualization with DPM 2007 to offer hosted backup services for their customers
• Staging your disaster recovery site using DPM 2007 for data and system state, with VMM's P2V utility for the OS

Lots of lively questions - even a few tense moments from a storage guy and a virtualization guy from companies other than Microsoft (no names).  But after some logical reasoning, I am pretty sure even they are going to run home and embrace DPM, VMM, Virtual Server, etc.  (They just can't tell their employers)  <grin>

Final Score for Day 2

Woke up at 6:30 - DPM'ing from 11AM until 7P - had some dinner with my friend and co-worker Michael Kirby, the orchestrator of DPM's launch and ongoing awareness activity - and then to bed at a surprisingly reasonable hour (midnight).  If you have ever seen an advertisement for DPM or if you thought we seemed to be everywhere these days, it's because of the team's efforts that are helmed by Mike.

On a personal note

I also got to do my one "tourist activity" for the week - with pretty much every other waking hour already committed to DPM.  But this morning, I didn't have to be onsite until 10:30, so I made it over to one of the most amazing churches in Europe.  The Sagrada Família Temple by Gaudi. 

        http://fodors.com/world/europe/spain/barcelona/entity_101306.html 

Awesome for the architecture, but what really did it for me was the statues depicting several, several scriptural passages.  To see those passages "come to life" (in stone) was beyond cool.  It has 8 of 12 spires for each apostle (4 plus a larger one for Christ were never finished).  So, now they are resuming construction.  I'll include a longer blog on that experience and some photo's of the statues on  my personal blog in the near future - http://jbuff.spaces.live.com

Today was a very, very good day.

Okay ... today was an awesome day for DPM ... we have launched!

It started with the Executive Keynote ... actually it started with my 5:30AM alarm clock going off.  Past that ...

Executive Keynote - Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President

Bob talked about a lot of technologies around Microsoft's uber-vision for IT Pro's ... Dynamic IT

As part of that, he announced:

          - System Center Configuration Manager 2007 - the successor to SMS 2003

          - System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 - a very cool management tool for virtual environments

                     and of course

          - System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 - yeah, baby !!!

He also mentioned some other Microsoft products like Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, our virtualization portfolio, etc.  But those reading those know that the big news is DPM 2007.  :-)

With 5500 in attendance, plus three overflow rooms - hours and hours of setup effort culminated in about 90 seconds of DPM 2007 showing protection for various Microsoft applications and file servers, using integrated disk and tape, and being managed by a UI that truly reflects the ease-of-use and seamless-media that will be the hallmark of DPM.

System Center Keynote - Brad Anderson, General Manager

This session was all about System Center, the newly released products, and Microsoft's management strategy which is being delivered through the System Center family of products.

OH, and it included our second DPM demo of the day.  In this case, I had the opportunity to spend several minutes showing the rich protection capabilities, highlight some of the features, etc.  Then, we talked about finding single Exchange mailbox versions to restore, some cool restore features for SQL and SharePoint, etc. 

This kind of sets up the rest of my week - by driving awareness for folks that will come to my other technical sessions, interactive Q&A's, hands-on and instructor-led labs, etc.

It was a little disappointing that the entire 5500 attendees didn't proceed directly from the Exec Keynote to this one, but our room was standing-room only and it was very well received.

As an aside, this was my first chance to hear Brad Anderson speak -- and he really has a command of the spaces in System Center, the nuances of the products, the markets and the competitors.  If you get the chance, attend his sessions/webcasts when available.   Was very strong -- and of course, the DPM demo rocked too...

The DPM Booth

Lots and lots of folks are coming to the booth ...

          - Last year, everyone was asking "What is DPM?"

          - For the last several months, everyone has been asking "When can I get it?"

          - Now, everyone is asking "My environment is ____ ... tell me how to deploy DPM?"

But my favorite quote so far has to be

          - "We (company) depend on Microsoft applications, why wouldn't I back it up with Microsoft?"

More DPM Demo Staging

To finish the day, I had to relocate my demo hardware from the keynote rooms to my first classroom - 90 minutes later, it was spinning again.  No technical issues, but just a lot of logistics to schedule a teardown of the setup in one room, move everything, find space and power, wire to the presentation desk, power everything up in the correct manner, etc.

Final score for day-1:

• Woke up at 5:30 - Onsite from 7AM until 9:30PM - Dinner from 10P-Midnight - in bed by 1A
• Both keynotes rocked - no live demo snafu's
• Lots of booth traffic and excitement that DPM is finally here

Pop Quiz - what could make a 9.5 hour flight from Dallas to Paris feel longer?

Answer - A 3-hour delay before take-off, sitting in the aircraft.  Yes, as an omen of all the good things that will come this week, we pulled away from the gate, tried to rev the engines and came back to the terminal. Three hours, a new radio and some repairs to the inflight power system, and we were off. Of course, that meant missing my connection in Paris and eventually getting to Barcelona 17 hours after beginning my trip.

DPM DEMO STAGING

Today is about staging demo's of DPM - yes, I am using VPC's everywhere, but it still takes time. And considering all of this work on the Sabbath - not sure if my set-ups will be blessed as error free or punished with extra Murphy's Law.

Here is what you see in a Microsoft keynote	Here is what I see in a Microsoft keynote
4500 seats, a very cool backdrop and a VP with his demo-minions.	A half-dozen product managers, 15-20 laptops and workstations, with multiple VPC's each, and a really nasty cabling setup into one KVM.   FYI - the laptop in the very front is mine, with this blog post.

What makes a DPM demo complicated? 

It takes 2 physical and 8 virtual servers to fully appreciate the uber-coolness of DPM 2007:

Host 1 - Windows Server 2003 sp2 with Virtual Server 2005 R2 sp1 - not in a domain (3Ghz / 2 GB RAM / fast disk)

• Domain Controller for Contoso
• the DPM 2007 server - with disk-based protection and a synthetic tape drive
• Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 File Server
• SQL Server 2005 sp2

Host 2 - Windows Server 2003 sp2 with Virtual Server 2005 R2 sp1 - in the Contoso domain (same specs)

• SQL Server 2008 (CTP-4 July)
• Exchange 2007
• SharePoint 2007
• Linux app server

The first host cannot be in the domain because the DC isn't running yet (it will run on this host).  The second host has to be in the domain, so that we can show DPM 2007 protecting a Virtual Server with a non-Windows guest like Linux.  Unfortunately, you can't run Virtual Server 2005 inside a virtual machine, so you can't carry it in a VPC.  It always has to be set up new with the host each time you set up a show.

Oh, and one more thing - for executive keynotes, we duplicate everything.

One of my old managers once said "You should have a standard demo that is always ready.  If your demo is all VPC's - it's easy.  You can just load them up and boot." 

This is a manager who had never done live demo before.  For the record, I packed up my most current VPC's (that have been giving me flawless demo's for several weeks) to a harddrive and a spare, and left for the airport.

Even with a good amount of preparation and working VPC's, I have had a few challenges --

1. The day before a major conference - everything is hectic beyond nuts.  So, while the event tech's are really, really good at what they do.  Getting in the queue to have your particular PC's imaged and delivered to your area will take longer than you think, regardless of how you pre-plan and schedule.  And until that happens, you have nothing but a hard drive to stare at.
2. The show hardware had a few issues with timezones.  As a tidbit, if you are running VM Additions prior to 813, the VPC's can have unusual time problems.  Some will pick up the local time directly from the host's adjusted time, and then adjust for the guest time zone.  Others will pick up the UMT time directly from the host and adjust correctly.  And others will in fact pick up the host's time-zone adjusted time, think its UMT, and then adjust internally.  The punch-line - cannot authenticate to the domain controller.  Solution - explicitly set all of the time zones to the same, and then force time sync with the DC.
3. When setting up a Virtual Server host server for the demo - you don't really want a machine named "keynotedemo004".  So, you need to rename the machine (e.g. MSVS251) and reboot, join the Contoso demo domain and reboot, install IIS and Virtual Server.  And then, you can copy the VHD's and start the environment.
4. About 30 minutes before the keynote demo dryrun, my Host-2 (with the big workloads) started being really unresponsive.  I didn't do too much troubleshooting for fear of not being ready for the dryrun.  After the dryrun and rebooting, the host PC has a bad harddrive - so I get to re-host the VPC/s again.  Obviously, this is a rare occurrence, but it is yet another reason to come in well ahead of schedule to adjust.

Final score for Day-0:

• Woke up at 7:00  --  Onsite by 8:30AM until 10PM - in bed by 11:30
• DPM demo's for both keynotes and classroom are spinning (3 out of 4 ain't bad)
• The booth hardware wasn't ready yet - will do tomorrow morning.
• Wake-up scheduled for 5:30, to be onsite by 7AM.

DPM 2007 has RTM'd ... and announced at Storage Networking World in Dallas in October.

DPM 2007 is generally available this month (November) - making its way to distributors, channel partners and Microsoft licensing vehicles as we speak.

But now comes my favorite part ... the DPM 2007 product launch. 

I have been looking forward to this for the entire 23 months of my Microsoft career.

This is my first real product launch as a Microsoft employee - although I have attended most big ones since Windows 95 as a customer or partner.  But DPM 2007 is why I joined Microsoft, so I have a very cool seat at the center of the storm.  And as such, I will try to share my daily adventures and impressions for November 9-17 at Microsoft Tech-Ed IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain.

As glamorous as Barcelona might sound - my adventures will be fly to Barcelona, taxi to the hotel next to the convention center - walk between the convention center and the hotel for six days, and fly home.  The longer version is:

Somewhere in that week, there will be some press/analyst and partner/customer meetings - and I truly do love to hang out at the DPM booth so look for me there.  I will try to attend a few sessions from my friends in SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange and Virtualization in case "backup" comes up.  And I will make a point of eating the local cuisine.

But this week, between now and then, I am trying to bake as many last pieces of content, key customer/press/analyst briefings, etc. as I can before I get on a plane Friday.

See you in Barcelona - or cyberspace

If you saw the official blog on the DPM blogsite, you’ll notice that this post has more exclamation marks.   This is a really exciting day for all of us at Microsoft, particularly those who have been preparing DPM 2007 to come to market.

With the RTM (release to manufacturing) milestone, we are now just weeks away from general availability.  The product will start appearing on Microsoft price lists and be generally available starting in November – and the official launch is also in November at Microsoft IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain.

On a personal note, this has been my focus since the day that I came to Microsoft – nearly 23 months ago.  I joined the company just shortly after DPM 2006 had launched.  And while DPM 2006 did a good job of centralizing backups of branch office servers, that wasn’t what drew me to Microsoft. 

I came here for DPM 2007 -- because I believe that DPM changes some of the rules in data protection.  Having been in backup and recovery for nearly fifteen years, at various tape backup and replication companies, there are some accepted tenants around backup and recovery that “DPM v2” really can affect:

1)      “If we build it, they will back it up” no longer applies.  In the old days, companies like Microsoft developed the Windows Server operating system or an application platform like SQL Server, and other folks would create the backup applications – because they weren’t covered from Microsoft (other than the NT Backup utility).  With DPM 2007, Microsoft -- the original creator of Window Server, and SQL Server, and Exchange, and SharePoint – as the company that has the most vested interest in creating value and ensuring high customer satisfaction with those customers, can now provide a complete and full-featured data protection and recovery experience.  I have been in IT, with channel partners, and also ISV’s – and watched the frustration between the backup guy saying that the recovery was successful and the application manager saying it wasn’t.  Bring in the integrators and eventually the various product support groups, and it didn’t get any better.

With DPM 2007, customers can look to Microsoft not only for their SQL Server solution (as an example), but also for the backup and recovery of that SQL Server deployment – from the simple incremental purchase on their existing Volume License / Enterprise Agreements, to their TAM understanding their needs, to the Microsoft Consulting Services deployment specialist, to Microsoft product support services.   Now, for authenticity's sake, are there still reasons to use non-Microsoft backup solutions for backing up Microsoft workloads - probably.  Some are political, othes are proceedural, and a few are technical.  But at least now, it isnt a mandate.  If a customer is predominantly using Microsoft workloads, they no longer have to look elsewhere to protect those workloads.

Similarly, DPM empowers Microsoft Partners who may or may not have a storage/backup specialty, but who are experts in their application areas (SQL Server or SharePoint) to deliver a rich data protection experience that is optimized for the workload that they are deploying for their customers -- again, consolidating that expertise back to the application owner/integrator without looking elsewhere.

2)      “CDP is only for the Enterprise” no longer applies.  Continuous Protection, Replication, Mirroring, Synchronization, have all been something that everyone recognizes that they need in addition to tape for long term retention, but that only large enterprises could afford – either by actual cost or complexity. 

DPM 2007 removes cost and complexity to bring continuous protection to mainstream environments - suitable for small businesses as well as large enterprises.  IT Generalists within smaller organizations, as well as partners, can deploy this without advanced pedigrees in storage technology.

3)      Disk and Tape are finally together in the right way.  Many, many years ago, I worked for a tape backup vendor (and was also a reseller for the others, before and after).  Almost all of those tape backup technologies have since adopted VTL as a short term solution to improve backup performance with disk – and are now trying to integrate (or acquire) replication technologies to supplement their solutions.  On the other side, I have also worked for disk-based replication companies that could replicate data from one disk to another, but had to rely on someone else to back it up for long term protection. 

DPM 2007 was built from the ground up with the understanding that customers need both, based on lessons learned and customer feedback for what they wanted but did not have with their current backup technologies.  With a seamlessly integrated disk to disk to tape (D2D2T) solution that not only delivers the functionality, but presents it in such a clean way that application stakeholders, like database administrators or email managers, can now own their own destiny and be successful in their own protection and recovery.

The DPM website has been updated (www.microsoft.com/DPM) - with new information on the upcoming release of DPM 2007, pricing/licensing details, and best of all - new downloads.

As some of you may have heard from our recent demonstration at SQL PASS or from the DPM newsgroups, we have a release candidate for DPM 2007 - and now everyone can start to evaluate it.

This is a later build than what some of our early adopter customers have already been working with, testing aggressively and have been putting into production.

This evaluation downloadable is the complete feature set for the upcoming release, so check out:

• Blending continuous data protection with traditional tape backup
• Protection for Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2005 and even 2008-previews
• Protection for Exchange Server 2003 and 2007
• Protection for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 & WSS 3.0
• Protection for Virtualized Environments hosted on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
• Protection for Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 files and shares
• Windows XP Professional (sp2) and Windows Vista Business edition or better
• System State protection
• Command-line control through Windows PowerShell

And new since Beta 2 for this evaluation and the upcoming RTM:

• Document-level restore for SharePoint
• Bare Metal Recovery

We'll be having a few Microsoft TechNet webcasts (and posting new whitepapers & datasheets) over the next few months to explain more about these features as we get ready to bring the product to market - but for now, go get the evaluation software and try all of the features.  Get ready - DPM 2007 is coming !!

Go try it !

I just finished a very busy week at the SQL Server Users' Conference (http://www.sqlpass.org/).

We started with the first public viewing of an early DPM 2007 "Release Candidate" (yes, you heard right) for around 2000 customers, partners and vendor-folk... where we demonstrated DPM protecting SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008.  It was very cool, but admittedly, I was a little nervous doing a keynote demo for a Microsoft VP.  Not worried about the software, just tripping on my way on/off stage.  :-)

After some booth duty, I finished the week with a technical breakout session on "How to Protect SQL Server with DPM 2007".  It was a slightly updated version that we did for Tech-Ed back in July - recorded here (http://www.microsoft.com/uk/technet/itsshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=552)

So, a couple of cool points:

Yes, there is a Release Candidate for DPM 2007.  It's not yet a public download, but be excited because it shows we are getting closer and closer to RTM.

Yes, DPM 2007 is already protecting SQL Server 2008.  So, if you are working with the early previews of SQL Server 2008 ("Katmai"), know that DPM is getting ready to protect those servers as well.  So, go get SQL Server CTP-4 (July Customer Preview # 4) and try it in your DPM environment today!

But one more thing that was new and I wanted to share was the #1 question that the SQL DBA's constantly asked me - "How does DPM compare with _________?" (third-party compressed backup products for SQL Server).  The product names varied (some I hadn't heard of), but when they explained their principles, the answer was usually the same. 

In general, DPM doesn't do direct competitive beat-downs, so I wanted to share my comparison of the operating concepts that differ between the methodologies- as well as the ramifications.  Your mileage and product capabilities will vary, but here is a clip of the session with my answer to the frequently asked question.

Streaming Video - How does DPM 2007 compare with Compressed Backups of SQL Server data (4 minutes)

Please let me know what you think or if this is helpful.

Released this week, a Microsoft TechNet Radio interview - hosted by my good buddy and IT Pro Evangelist Matt Hester - interviewing me on what is coming in DPM 2007. 

Originally posted at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/tnradio/archive/sep112007.mspx.  But to save you one mouse click, here is the info:

September 11, 2007

Learn about System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

Currently in Beta 2, and set to release later this year, System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 combines the best aspects of continuous data protection (CDP) and traditional tape backup to provide a complete data protection solution using disk and tape. DPM is designed to protect Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, SharePoint Services, as well as most Windows Server and Windows desktop environments. For this TechNet Radio session, learn all about the rich new features and functionality in DPM 2007.

Length: 0:35:13

WMA | MP3 High | MP3 Low
To save to your computer, right click and choose 'save target as…'.

On August 30th, I finally get to talk about two of my favorite technologies in the same session - data protection and virtualization.

For the past several years, two areas of computing continually get hotter and hotter - storage and virtualization.  And if I wasnt a "backup guy", I would most certainly be a "virtual guy" (no masculinity jokes, please).

For this upcoming TechNet webcast, I will be joined by Tony Bailey, product manager for Windows Virtual Server.  We're going to talk about:

• Protecting Virtual Environments with DPM 2007 - courtesy of the VSS writer inside of Virtual Server 2005 R2 service pack 1
• Hosted Backup Services - as an offering from hosting providers and Microsoft integrators, for their SMB customers
• Disaster Recovery preparedness, with DPM 2007, Virtual Server, and the upcoming System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2007

Please register for this TechNet webcast at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032348951&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Just because you know how DPM 2006 works ... you don't know DPM 2007.

That statement is a little bold, since many folks know both products -- but lately, I have heard a surprisingly large number of assumptions from people on how DPM2007 does what it does -- or what its capabilities actually will be - or even what its limitations will be. 

Marketing note - DPM 2007 has no limitations, only opportunities for future enhancement.

What is interesting to me is that these assumptions often come from folks that are claiming to be in-depth on DPM 2006.  Ok ... the good news is that DPM 2006 did a good job at what it did, and a lot of people invested some learning in to how to work it.  The bad news is that they are assuming what is inside DPM 2007.  My point is don't assume that even the basics of your understanding of DPM 2006 necessarily apply to DPM 2007.

As one example that I hear most often - and probably the most common technical question for DPM...

"How does DPM protect data ... How does the DPM filter work ?"

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DPM 2006, our existing product, used a file system filter - meaning that there was kernel-mode driver that passively monitored what was going on between the IO Manager of the Windows OS and the stack that eventually culminated with NTFS.SYS.  Lots of storage technologies sit in this stack - including many anti-virus technologies and other data protection mechanisms.

Anti-Virus filters tend to be what I call "Blocking" drivers - meaning that they watch what is coming down  from the OS towards the disk.  They block the flow when a new write comes down, to check it against their virus signatures.  If everything is clean, then they allow the file operation to continue moving downstream to the disk.

Disk-Protection filters, like DPM 2006, are usually thought of as "non-Blocking" drivers - meaning that their job is allow the original disk write to proceed thru the disk stack at normal pace, but grab a copy of the file operation to be dealt with separately.  This is a somewhat common method of asynchronous host-based replication or synchronization, particularly if you are not application aware.

In the case of DPM 2006, the filter would hand of a copy of the file system operation to a DPM journal on the production server disk, called a Synchronization Log.  It was literally a log file of the NTFS operations done on the production disk.  On a regular schedule, the DPM 2006 server fetches what is in the log and essentially repeats those file operations on the DPM Server's copy of the files.

It was a good idea -- and Microsoft wasn't the only data protection technology to use the principles of it.  But don't assume that even something as foundational as the plumbing is consistent for DPM 2007.

Microsoft has said for years that the advocated way to protect data that resides on a Windows OS is through VSS, Volume Shadow Services, which provides a method for operating systems and applications to put their data in a clean state, in part to prepare for backup activity.

DPM 2007 uses the VSS writers provided by the application workloads that we protect -- we do NOT use a file system filter to capture file changes.  Because of that, while we could already protect Windows Server 2003 and 2008, we had to drop support for Windows 2000 Server ... no VSS writer.  On the other side, we now get the ability to protect desktops running Windows XP (and Windows Vista), something we could not do with DPM 2006, because XP didn't have a a file-system filter manager.  But it does use VSS.  Get the idea?

And because the DPM 2007 filter monitors changed blocks, instead of changed files, we don't require any additional disk footprint on the production servers.  There isn't any "Synchronization Log", which was usually sized at 10% of the production data footprint.  Congrats ... you get that space back when you upgrade to DPM 2007.

Please check out my 10 minute deep dive on exactly how DPM 2007 captures data, including not only how we use VSS, but also how transactions within SQL Server and Exchange are protected. 

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STREAMING VIDEO (10 minutes) -- How DPM 2007 protects data (deep-dive) 

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There are lots of things that are similar between DPM 2006 and DPM 2007, such as the empowering of End-Users to restore their own documents through Windows Explorer or Microsoft Office -- via the Previous Versions Client (the topic for a future blog, I'm sure).   But hopefully this gives an example of why one should not assume that what you think you might know about DPM 2006 applies to DPM 2007. 

The DPM Engineering team has done some truly amazing work in delivering a product that many say will set a new bar for data protection in the Windows world and changes the landscape of data protection overall.  To do that, we had to re-invent a few things, all of which are for the better.

So, please come learn about what is coming in DPM 2007.

OK, serious gamers ... he hasn't beaten yours.  But he does have a 1440 ... and he's six.

It is amazing to me how Achievement Points have affected gaming in my family.  Here are a couple of examples:

We already owned Star Wars LEGO II for Xbox ... having played the first one all of the way through, we got the second one on its release.  They're both great games, by the way, whether you are a kid, a kid at heart, or just an unapologetic Star Wars fan. 

But then, we bought it again for Xbox360 because of the achievement points.

We received Cars for GameCube as a gift ... but we bought it again for Xbox360 ... for the achievement points. 

If you are going to spend time in something, you may as well get the extra credit/rewards -- and the better graphics, yada, yada.

I mention those two games because those are where the majority of his points have come from, so far.  He doesn't like to play those titles on our other consoles, because he knows that he won't get points for them.  Heck, we ended up getting a second Xbox360 for my kids, so that I didn't have to keep sharing mine.

When we first started playing Fuzion Frenzy II, I thought it was cute when he won a trophy or two at 50 points each.  And the points he got from Viva Pinata came every once in a while.

But I've tried some of the Cars race tracks and tasks that he has already achieved, and I haven't beat them yet.   And at 50-75 points per track victory, he's up to 750 out of 1000 (12 of 15 achievements).  He'll eventually beat that entire game.

Not long ago, I was explaining that in Star Wars Lego II, there are certain things to do for each of the story levels - find the canisters, finish the gold bar, find the red brick, etc. (if you play, you'll understand).  I also told him that he would get achievement points if he went through an entire level without getting killed. 

Parental note on "killed" - They're LEGO's, so they just fall apart and come back together.  I'm not letting him play Gears of War or anything. 

This afternoon, he came into my office with a big grin ... he has now gone through two of the levels "undefeated" (20 points each).  He has to slow down a little and get healthy, but he knows how and is playing the game as well any adult.  Frankly, it encourages him to be more patient and methodical, and since he is already more exploratory, he's finding more of those secret corners and locations, so he'll likely beat more of the game than I will.

Here's my point ... As a dad who has invested a good amount of money in the video games, I must say that I'm pleased that the points actually help my kids understand when they have "finished" the game.  Instead of just playing some of the levels and getting bored, or even just going through the entire story line and saying "done".  The achievements help them see that there is more to each game -- and frankly, they play it more thoroughly before looking for their next challenge -- and that means that we get more of our money's worth out of each title.

I would rather pay $40 for a game that they will likely play for 50 hours -- than save $10 for a game that they may play for 15-20.  Above the improved graphics and other enhancements, the points encourage a thoroughness and ROI that more than justifies the incremental spend between the Xbox360 version and one of the other platforms' versions.

It also got me thinking ... when all of his friends inevitably get Xbox360's or other Live platforms or PC's ... and they are comparing gamer scores, he's going to look amazing. 

And his daddy will be so proud.

Here is an email that I received from a DPM early adopter which was just too cool not to share.  This customer has a distributed-infrastructure, is mid-market sized, and is using DPM 2007 beta 2 to protect Exchange 2007 SP1 beta (partipating in two Microsoft early adopter TAP/RDP programs - in production).

Any administrator who has ever had that "Oh Crud" moment when they clicked on a change and realized that something really bad is now occurring will empathize.  Your gut tightens up and everything moves in slow motion as you cry out "Nooooooooooooooo".  But its too late.  Hope you enjoy the letter...

Hi all – Just wanted to extend a big THANK YOU & JOB WELL DONE for the current DPM bits working with Exchange 2007 SP1 beta.

In getting ready to remove my last Exchange 2003 server, I inadvertently removed Exchange attributes from 5 active accounts earlier this evening (VIPs, naturally). Of course, once I’d done this faux pas I then had 5 users whose email and UM voicemail had vanished.

 

After several attempts at reconnecting the accounts to their mailboxes (all of which failed since Exchange attributes were toast…) – I set up a Recovery Storage Group on my mailbox server, used DPM to restore a recent backup to the RSG (the last recovery point on disk was less than an hour before I’d waved my stupid wand…), created new mailboxes for the already-existing accounts, and merged the contents of each back in.

 

The end result is that what could have been a major disaster with an all-night recovery process turned into just a couple hours of work (that was good to go through anyway) – and the only reason it was a couple of hours is that the 5 mailboxes were in 5 different SG’s.

 

It only took DPM 10-15 minutes to restore each database (about 15 GB ea); each DB restored & mounted without a hitch.  Then I used the Exchange tools to merge the mailbox contents; and had about 5 minutes of “cleanup” to do for each one. 

 

The end result: all 5 mailboxes are back to their original state – and the only thing the users will have to do in the morning is re-record their UM greetings.

 

So… DPM has saved me and I can now go home instead of working all night J

 

THANKS <with sigh of relief>… DPM rocks!!!

<Marketing disclaimer> your mileage will vary, recovery methods vary based on topology and workload, not valid in timbuktu <end Marketing disclaimer>

On a sincere note, if I ever doubted coming to Microsoft almost two years ago to help bring DPM 2007 to market ... this kind of story nails it for me. 

Thanks to the submitter - you know who you are ... and if you have similar success stories with DPM, we'd love to hear them.

I want to lift up a team of Microsoft individuals that you may not know about - the Storage Technology Specialists at Microsoft.

• If you are a Microsoft customer, you likely know who your Microsoft Partner or your Microsoft Account Team is. 
• If you are a Microsoft Partner, you should know who your Partner Manager is. 

In either scenario, hopefully you feel that you are dealing with some of the sharpest and most motivated customer and partner facing people in the industry.  But like everything, there is good news and bad news. 

• The good news is that you know who they are and they are good at what they do. 
• The bad news, if you want to call it that, is that Microsoft has an incredibly broad and powerful portfolio of products and technologies. 

Because of this, the Microsoft field organization has "Technology Specialists" who are deep in a focused area of technologies, who are there to support your ATS, PAM, TAM, or other direct interface with Microsoft.  We have specialists in a variety of areas, including Messaging, Databases, Infrastructure, etc.  One of those areas is "Storage". 

There are also many Microsoft people in Customer Service, Microsoft Consulting Services, IT Pro Evangelists, as well as our partners, who are definitely storage saavy -- but for pre-sales engagements with customers, we wanted to add some additional depth to aid the general Microsoft field.  So, several years ago, Microsoft started building a great team of storage experts, with backgrounds in SAN hardware, Backup technologies, IT operations, etc.  Storage TS's each cover a defined geography around the world, as well as lending their own areas of expertise to their peers.

One unique challenge that Storage TS's have is bringing together a variety of internal storage technologies and products that come from different Microsoft product groups, including:

• System Center Data Protection Manager -- from the System Center family of management products
• Windows Storage Server & WUDSS -- OEM optimized versions of Windows Server for storage appliances
• NTFS and all the underlying file system technologies - from CFS, Core File System
• the file workload capabilities of the Windows Server and Windows Client OS product(s)
• DFS-R and DFS-N from within the Windows Server OS team
• iSCSI initiator and iSCSI target technologies

There are others, but this is the point -- the Microsoft Storage TS brings all of these technologies together as a single subject matter expert and resource to the Microsoft Account Team or Partner Manager -- so that our customers and partners can better understand all of the storage-centric capabilities that Microsoft brings together.

Over time, we have been consolidating some of these products under a single organization -- the Storage Solutions Division -- which I will blog about separately, but in the meantime ... I wanted you to know that these storage saavy guru's exist, and are available to help you apply all of these offerings to your particular business and technical challenges.

So, if you are looking to deploy a new project within your enterprise that includes (1) Backup & Restore, (2) Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity, (3) High Performing Storage Appliances ... or you just need to get more out of the file sharing capabilities of Windows Server on a large scale - then ask your Microsoft interface to help you engage your regional Storage Specialist.

Oh, and if you know the difference between "iSCSI" and "I am scuzzy" ... between "backing up" and "being ready to restore" (no joke) ... plus or minus several years of block and file technologies, than drop me an email and I will point you to one of the Storage Specialist managers.

And to the Storage TS's who read this blog -- I salute you.  Keep up the great work...

Last week, I spoke at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference. 

It wasn't my normal 60-90 minutes on "Protecting SQL" or "Protecting Exchange" or even just an overview of DPM.  This time, I was just 15 minutes of a "Business Opportunities in Windows Virtualization" - specifically, teaching Microsoft Partners how to provide a service of backing up their customers' data.

DPM 2006 actually already had materials on this architecture available to partners; but like most other sets of users, partners have been waiting for DPM 2007 for a more comprehensive solution - protecting Exchange, SQL, SharePoint as well as Windows file servers (which was all 2006 did).

Essentially, the primary technology burden for those starting a "hosted backup" offering usually is the hardware expense associated with providing a dedicated and isolated back up server for every customer.  Since most customers start these kinds of projects small, with either a proof-of-concept or project server, the income doesnt cover the costs of the hardware.

Enter Microsoft Virtualization - in particular, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2.

Virtualization is a great way to consolidate multiple small servers into a single, robust hardware platform.  In this case, one might deploy between 4 to 10 virtual machines inside a physical host server running MSVS. 

Then, install a DPM Server inside of each virtual server -- and attach it to a different customer.

Now, virtual DPM server #1 can protect your Contoso customer's server(s) while virtual DPM server #2 protects Northwind Traders!

This way, the virtual DPM server is an actual member of the customer's domain - even (optionally) enabling customer end users to restore their own files thru DPM -- without any intervention from their IT or yours.  It keeps one customer's data and Active Directory separate from anothers.

It also makes the hosted backup provider's business more scalable.  If Contoso were to end up protecting 40 servers, the Contoso virtual DPM servers ends up being the only virtual DPM server on one host machine ... while Northwind Traders is only protecting 3 servers, so its virtual DPM server can be co-hosted with several other virtual DPM servers until that host's resoures are consumed.

From a resiliency perspective, the service provider can protect the Virtual Server hosts (including the various guest OS's) without even being able to see the data inside of the virtual DPM machines.  This is a huge advantage and security benefit over remote backup technologies that try to back up across customers' domains ... where the backup application is able to see all of the original corporate data.  Of course, one should "trust" one's service provider, but my preference is to trust them to provide a service, not trust them to not look inside.  (no offense intended).

As a last nugget to consider -

If a small business were to experience a fire or theft in their offices, who is the first technology person that they are going to call?  Their local integrator/reseller partner.  So, wouldn't it be a good thing if the partner already had the data?!  They can expedite new hardware, restore from their datacenter, and walk a fully ready to go server back to the customer.

And all it takes is DPM (today's DPM 2006 or the upcoming DPM 2007) and Microsoft Virtual Server - also already available.

Just add Service ... which is what Microsoft Partners are all about.

No, not a sequel to the first Xbox 360 game - which is too bad, because that really is a good game.  The current VP game is great for kids and one of the best reasons I had for putting a second Xbox360 in my house.  The first one is all mine, but my wife and kids (and I) love that game.  For the kids, its fun to to create gardens (habitats for the pinata to live in).  But after a while, the strategy of food-chains and nurturing kick in - and it starts to get my obsessive compulsive RTS juices flowing.  As one article from the Digital Gamer states, it really is one of the best games from 2006 that you may not own.

 http://thedigitalgamer.typepad.com/the_digital_gamer/2007/01/viva_piata_why_.html

But that isn't the primary reason for this blog post.  PS> did I mention that the current Viva Pinata is really awesome, highly addictive after a few hours, and your family will thank you for getting it.  :-)

(sorry) ... so this week, I saw "Viva Pinata : Party Animals" listed on XBOX.COM !!! (game listing here)

It appears to be being developed by Krome Studios, instead of Rare.  And while I am a huge fan of more than a few Rare titles, Krome did the Ty Tasmanian Tiger series (1-2-3) that are also kid-friendly and owned in my house.  Details on VP:PA is not yet on Krome's website, so we will all need to check back later on that one.

While not a sequel, it appears to use the same characters but a family-friendly, multi-player online and offline format.  Perhaps along the style of Nintendo Mario Party or Disney Party format(?) and boasts more than 40 mini-games.  Since my family night routinely includes playing those titles, and all five members of my household currently have Viva Pinata gardens that they are tending ... we will definitely be looking forward to becoming "Party Animals" when this title releases.

From Tech-Ed 2007 last month.  Its about an hour long and includes "how does it work" and demo's for protecting and recovering SQL.

 Check out the video

These last several weeks have been very exciting - starting with the release of Beta 2 for DPM 2007 at Tech-Ed ... and am writing this from the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC).

When I joined Microsoft two years ago, people would come up and ask either:

1)  Why is DPM part of System Center (management products)?

2)  What is DPM?

The last one hurt  :-)  but to the first one, I explained that "Backup is a management task, and like its brethren Operations Manager and Configuration Manager, aided IT Pro's in managing, monitoring, deploying and yes, backing up, the rest of their Windows infrastructure. blah, blah, blah ..."  (it's true, I just got tired of explaining it)

But these days, no one is asking "What is DPM?" ... they all seem to be asking "When is DPM 2007 going to ship?" - and that's a very good thing.  That's the excitement that I had when I saw the potential of DPM two years ago - and signed on.  Now, everybody is figuring it out that DPM really is a very cool thing.

I've been in data protection for over 15 years, with integrators, backup vendors, replication vendors, and now Microsoft.  You used to always buy your OS and Applications from one vendor, and back them up with another.  DPM offers protection for the Microsoft OS (Server 2003, Server 2008, XP and Vista) ... along with Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and Virtual Server ... FROM MICROSOFT.  That really changes the game !!!

And more and more people are starting to see that.

So, no one is asking "What is DPM" (which is a good thing) ... and most folks now understand that Backup is part of IT management, so it is reasonably a System Center product.  Although a few months ago, just to keep things interesting, Microsoft interally merged the DPM folks with their Storage buddies who make Windows Storage Server and manage the file capabilities within Windows Server OS.  So now, most of the folks at Microsoft who think about disks, and tapes, and files, and data ... are all marching to a single drummer.  Its a good thing for the new team, as well as for partners and ultimately customers, and something I'll add more to in another blog.

In the meantime, good night from WPC in Denver ... and get ready for DPM 2007

This is my first blog site -- although everyone who knows me says that I have an opinion on everything, and usually passionate that I am right.  So, hopefully, this will be a soapbox where I can give some ideas that you might find useful, and maybe we'll both learn something along the way.

From the Data Protection Manager (DPM) and Essentials (SCE) dude ... also a Husband, Father, Gamer, Geek, Scout leader, Christ follower and Microsoft marketeer.

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