Ctrl P - The Data Protection Manager Blog!

Data Protection Manager 2010 Release Candidate – now available

We could say a lot of fluffy marketing stuff, but the most important thing to say is – COME AND GET IT !

We are very excited to announce that the Release Candidate for DPM 2010 is now available for public download.  

Download the Release Candidate for DPM 2010

If you would like to see more about what the RC looks like, please watch our webcast from last month, titled “Get Ready for DPM 2010 RC”.

 

 

Update February 9 morning – some of the download servers are still getting the bits, so if you get a link error than too many people in your area are already downloading it, or it is still staging.  Wait a little while and try again.

Hyper-V Protection with DPM 2010 Beta - How to automatically protect new Virtual Machines on a Secondary DPM

 

Recently we have written a blog on using scripts to help you automatically protect new Virtual Machines in you environment, on your Primary DPM server. With some of our customers using it successfully already we have received requests for similar scripts to automatically protect new Virtual Machines on the Secondary DPM server.

This blog post aims to further simplify your protection tasks by automating the process of adding new VMs that are added in your primary DPM server, to be protected on the secondary DPM server as well. By using the information in this blog post, you should be able to quickly put together a script that can enable the auto protection of your hyper-v hosts on the secondary DPM.

 

Download Scripts:  AddNewClusteredVMToDRServer.ps1  and AddNewStandAloneVMToDRServer.ps1

 

Note: These scripts work on an existing protection group and do not create a fresh protection group.

These scripts work in a manner similar to the ones used to add VMs to the Primary DPM Server, AddNewClusteredVM.ps1 and AddNewStandAloneVM.ps1. The only difference is that they take an additional parameter that is theFQDN of the primary DPM server. If you know how these scripts work, you may skip reading the rest of the blog post and go back to use the new scripts right away.

The attached scripts automate the task of adding any new Hyper-V virtual machines recognized in the primary DPM server, into existing protection groups. There are different scripts for VMs from a Hyper-V cluster (AddNewClusteredVMToDRServer.ps1) and from a standalone Hyper-V host (AddNewStandAloneVMToDRServer.ps1). You would still use the script for standalone servers to automatically protect on the Secondary DPM server, the non-clustered virtual machines of any Hyper-V host that is part of a cluster.

Let us now walk you through the scenario and the scripts...

Walk Through

Protecting standalone Hyper-V hosts on the Secondary DPM

The script for standalone servers (AddNewStandAloneVMToDRServer.ps1) takes as input the following three values in order:

Variable	Explanation	Example
Server Name	Fully Qualified Domain Name of the Hyper-V host server.	hyperv01.contoso.com
Protection Group	Name of the existing protection group on the secondary DPM to which we are adding the new virtual machines.	Protection Group 3
Primary DPM Server Name	Fully Qualified Domain Name of the Primary DPM server.	dpm-server01.contoso.com

 

The script performs the following tasks:

1. Takes FQDN of protected server, name of protection group and FQDN of primary DPM server as input.

2. Searches for the protected server, the protection group on the secondary DPM server and the primary DPM server.

3. Runs inquiry on the Primary DPM Server and the Hyper-V host and obtains the list of unprotected virtual machines.

4. Adds the obtained list of virtual machines to the protection group.

5. Saves the changes to the protection group and exits.

Example usage:

This example takes the following values as inputs:

hyperv01.contoso.com – replace this with the name of your Hyper-V host

Protection Group 3 - replace this with the name of the protection group on the Secondary DPM.

dpm-server01.contoso.com – replace this with the name of your DPM server

PS C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\bin> .\AddNewStandAloneVMToDRServer.ps1 hyperv01.contoso.com "Protection Group 3" dpm-server01.contoso.com

Name                                                     Domain

----                                                         ------

dpm-server01.contoso.com                CONTOSO.COM

Running Inquiry on hyperv01.contoso.com

Adding data source Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\StandaloneVM to Protection Group 3

Adding new Hyper-V data sources to Protection Group 3

Exiting from script

Protecting Hyper-V clusters on the Secondary DPM

The script for clustered servers (AddNewClusteredVMToDRServer.ps1) takes as input the following three values in order:

Variable	Explanation	Example
Cluster Name	Fully Qualified Domain Name of the Hyper-V cluster.	csv01.contoso.com
Protection Group	Name of the existing protection group on the secondary DPM to which we are adding the new virtual machines.	Protection Group 2
Primary DPM Server Name	Fully Qualified Domain Name of the Primary DPM server.	dpm-server01.contoso.com

 

The script performs the following tasks:

1. Takes FQDN of protected cluster, name of protection group and FQDN of the primary DPM server as input.

2. Searches for the protected cluster, the protection group and the primary DPM server.

3. Runs inquiry on the primary DPM server and the cluster to get the list of resource groups.

4. Runs parallel inquiry for each resource group and obtains the list of unprotected virtual machines under them.

5. Adds the unprotected virtual machines to the protection group.

6. Saves the changes to the protection group and exits.

The difference in this script is in Step 3 & 4 in AddNewClusteredVMToDRServer.ps1 where we run inquiry on the cluster to get the list of resource groups, followed by inquiry on the resource groups. Also, inquiry on resource groups is run in parallel unlike what we do for standalone servers. We run inquiry in parallel for the cluster to avoid a performance overhead. Such an overhead is not seen for standalone servers.

Example usage:

This example takes the following values as input:

csv01.contoso.com – replace this with the name of your Hyper-V cluster

Protection Group 2 - replace this with the name of the protection group on the Secondary DPM.

dpm-server01.contoso.com – replace this with the name of your Primary DPM server

PS C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\bin> .\AddNewCLusteredVMToDRServer.ps1 csv01.contoso.com "Protection Group 2" dpm-server01.contoso.com

Name                                                     Domain

----                                                        ------

dpm-server01.contoso.com                CONTOSO.COM

Running Inquiry on csv01.contoso.com

Running Inquiry on Cluster Group

Running Inquiry on Available Storage

Running Inquiry on SQLLoadVM

Running Inquiry on SharepointLoadVM

Running Inquiry on Win7VM

Waiting for inquiry to complete 0 item(s) obtained...

.

Waiting for inquiry to complete 1 item(s) obtained...

.

.

Waiting for inquiry to complete 5 item(s) obtained...

Inquiry listed 5 item(s)...

Adding data source Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\Win7VM to Protection Group 2

Adding new Hyper-V data sources to Protection Group 2

Exiting from script

 

You can now write a batch file to call the above scripts one after the other and schedule it using the Windows Task Scheduler to run as frequently as needed.

Important:

· Shared disks that may be listed under the resource groups of your Hyper-V cluster are not Hyper-V data sources, and are not considered for automatic addition using this script.

· Any new virtual machines that are finally added to a protection group are scheduled for immediate replica creation, overriding any existing protection group behavior. You may modify the respective script to change this after referring the specific cmdlet help option.

 

-- Angad Pal Singh | DPM Team (Author)

Tested hardware VSS provider table

System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 tested hardware VSS provider for backup of Virtual machines deployed on Clustered Shared Volumes

The table below contains the list of VSS hardware provider tested to be compatible with DPM for protecting virtual machines deployed on clustered shared volumes (CSV).

The fact that a VSS hardware provider for a certain SAN is not listed below does not mean that it is not compatible, but that it has not been tested. If you have questions regarding VSS hardware provider for certain SAN not listed in the tables below, please post it in the DPM newsgroup (http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.dataprotectionmanager) or send an email to dpmsanhs@microsoft.com.

Note: The product group will continue to work with our existing and new partners to keep the information on this page updated.

Compellent

Model	VSS hardware provider version	Obtaining the VSS hardware provider	Support Information
Compellent Storage center 4.2 and above	05.00.01.004	Distributed as part of Replay Manager product (separate purchase required).	Compellent Service representative.

Dell

Model	Firmware version	VSS hardware provider version	Obtaining the VSS hardware provider	Support Information
EqualLogic PS series	4.2.1 or later	3.3.1 or later	Find here	Dell Service representative.

Provider link: https://www.EqualLogic.com/support/download.aspx?id=3199

HP

Model	Firmware version	VSS hardware provider version	Obtaining the VSS hardware provider	Additional Information	Support Information
EVA 4x00, 6x00, 8x00	XCS 09006000	6.04	Click here to download the hardware VSS provider.	Command-View software Version 9.1.017	HP Call center OR HP Services representative for higher level support contracts.

NetApp

Model	Firmware version	VSS hardware provider version	Obtaining the VSS hardware provider	Additional information	Support Information
FAS2000 Series FAS3000 Series FAS3100 Series FAS6000 Series V3100 Series V6000 Series	Data ONTAP 7.3.0 or above	6.2.0.4508 or above	See below	See the SnapDrive for Windows Installation and Administration Guide, available on http://now.netapp.com for information on installing, configuring, and troubleshooting SnapDrive for Windows in general, and the Data ONTAP VSS Hardware Provider in particular	Support for SnapDrive for Windows in general, and the Data ONTAP VSS Hardware Provider in particular is available through NetApp Global Services (see below) Support is also available through authorized resellers

Obtainer provider:

The Data ONTAP VSS Hardware Provider ships as part of and is installed with NetApp SnapDrive for Windows, which is licensed per storage controller, or per physical Windows Server. The version of the Data ONTAP VSS Hardware Provider tested with DPM 2010 ships with SnapDrive 6.2 for Windows or above.

Licensed customers can download SnapDrive for Windows from http://now.netapp.com.  Further information on SnapDrive for Windows is available on http://www.netapp.com/us/products/management-software/snapdrive-windows.html.

Support information:

visit http://www.netapp.com/us/support/ngs-contacts.html for contact information), and through NetApp on the Web: http://now.netapp.com.

How to create and delete recovery points for DPM via PowerShell

Knowing how to manipulate DPM by way of PowerShell can come in handy in many situations. For example, I had a case to where I was troubleshooting the DPM console that was crashing and there was a concern as to whether or not recovery points where being made for specific protection groups. Using the PowerShell command we could not only verify this, but we could create a recovery point to any protection group we wished. Another example would be if you wanted to delete some recovery points to reclaim some disk space.  Recovery points cannot be deleted by the GUI so you have to use PowerShell to accomplish that goal.

This video covers how to use PowerShell to both create and delete recovery points:

Shane Brasher | Senior DPM Support Escalation Engineer

Troubleshooting SharePoint recoveries for DPM

There are some common issues we run into when troubleshooting SharePoint recoveries and the video below covers how to diagnose common SharePoint DPM recoveries using the various logs that are available. The two areas of focus are insufficient space and incorrect templates related issues. The video covers using the MSDPMcurr.errlog, Traclogs, monitoring logs, and the event viewer for our troubleshooting.

Note: You must have the Recovery Farm setup correctly as per: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd180789.aspx

Shane Brasher | Senior DPM Support Escalation Engineer

DPM 2010 Release Candidate webcast preview

Hopefully you have been enjoying the DPM 2010 beta since September, but we are almost finished with the Release Candidate and our last milestones towards delivery. 

Please join us on January 14 at 9:00 AM Pacific US Time to see what is coming in the Release Candidate  We will demonstrate the pre-RC software that our early adopters have been running in production.  We’ll demonstrate the new Windows client protection capabilities, the new SQL/SharePoint/Exchange protection and recovery features, as well as the enhanced Disaster Recovery scenario.  We’ll also update you on our auto-healing/auto-scaling features, as well as a few surprises that weren’t in the beta.  Come join us to see what is coming in DPM 2010.

TechNet Webcast: Get Ready for Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 Release Candidate (Level 300)

Start Date:  Thursday, January 14, 2010 9:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Duration:  90 Minutes

Audience(s):  IT Generalist

Click Here to Register for this week’s webcast

Post Webcast Update -- if you missed the live event, you can still watch the recording.  Click on the registration link above to view the on-demand recording.

DPM 2010 Protecting Exchange 2010 DAG in a Single Site

Why should you backup an Exchange 2010 DAG implementation with DPM? 

What should you be thinking about before you make a final decision?

What is the way out of this conundrum?  

 

….Well, it depends.  Let me walk you through a scenario. 

First, let us make a couple of seminal assumptions:

· That you will you will have more than one copy of an Exchange DB in a DAG.  OK, you are allowed a duh!

· That you will be deploying Exchange 2010 DAG with cheap JBODs, which will undoubtedly save you a bundle.

· If you are going to use JBOD, then you really understand how to interpret MTBF and its relationship to uptime SLA.

All Exchange Mailbox Servers in one site (HA but no DR)

If you want to deploy Exchange 2010 with JBOD, it is recommended that you should deploy with at least three copies.  In addition to this, if you want to also use the DAG copies for Point In Time (PIT) recovery, then you will need a server to host the lagged copy of the DB.  Lagged copies are a means to safeguard against store/logical corruption events (and possibly accidental mailbox deletions). If you are going to distribute the lagged copies among your primary severs, then you will need at least two lagged copies.  If you are going to use dedicated servers with lagged copies with JBOD, for better reliability you are well advised to deploy enough servers to house two lagged copies; otherwise you could deploy dedicated lagged copy servers with RAID and thus only have one lagged copy per database.

So how many copies are we up to? …and how many servers?  

OK, three copies per DB; two more for PIT lagged copies; one less if you share and distribute the lagged copy on more than one primary server or if you use RAID for PIT.  That is, 1, 2, 3, wait.  All right, you are big boys/girls (smart Admin people), you know how to fire up Microsoft Excel to do the math and cost it out.

From all accounts, recovering PIT from lagged copies is not a walk in the park.  In fact, you are well advised not to plan for it too frequently.  Plus, you can only have a maximum of 14 day replay lag for lagged copies.  This is a limit imposed by Exchange 2010.  If you also decide to share the primary servers and implement lagged copies, then you will be using the primary mailbox server for your recoveries – so plan your IOPS so that you do not impact Outlook client SLAs during these recoveries and re-seeds and manage your Active and Passive nodes carefully.

Introduce DPM into this equation:

Let us say you implement only three copies of an Exchange DB with JBOD, and use DPM for backup and PIT recovery.  Now what?  You have:

· As many PIT as you like J

· Recovering a PIT from DPM is far easier J

· You may not need that 4^th DAG copy J

Wait, it is not all smiles; most of the time we recommend RAID for DPM.  DPM is typically configured with RAID but is just as happy with JBOD, particularly if you do D2T, DPM2DPM or protect a secondary copy as well DPM-DR. Make sure that these choices are part of the spreadsheet you are working on. And, some of the following features may require you to move up to a higher version of Exchange 2010.

· Deleted items in Exchange 2010 no longer require PIT recovery; this can be implemented with the single item recovery and litigation hold functionality. 

· The lagged copy or a DPM backup is useful for logical corruption prevention and for recovery of deleted mailboxes (since their purge cannot be prevented)

Additional reasons why you should consider DPM

In addition to direct storage costs attributable to backup, you should also consider these additional advantages.  Some of these may very well be primary reasons for opting for DPM. You may also be able to use one less DAG node, and, in the process get some additional features

· Ease of use for recovery from backup with a simple and easy to use GUI.

o No time consuming steps to find and replay log files

o No need to (possibly) create scripts for recovering from a lagged copy.

o No need to guess how many log files you need to replay for a PIT.

· Faster recovery RPO

o No need to play back all the log files, etc.

· You can easily backup to tape, for offsite storage for compliance, etc.

· Centralized standard (corporate) processes to implement backup and recovery across multiple workloads (File systems, SharePoint, Hyper-V, SQL, etc.)

So there you have it.  Two solutions from Microsoft, working together to give you an optimal solution for your IT problems.

 

Ciao,

Krishna Mangipudi (Author)

Check back for more on how DPM 2010 will improve Exchange 2010 DR.  That is a story for another day.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some useful links

DPM 2010 Overview: For an overview of how DPM 2010 and Exchange 2010 work together, including a quick demo – check out our recent podcast at:

http://edge.technet.com/Media/System-Center-Data-Protection-Manager-2010-and-Microsoft-Exchange/

Exchange 2010: Planning for High Availability and Site Resilience

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638104.aspx

Recover-Recoverable Item

Its 6:00PM.  You were supposed to leave at 5:00PM.  Your boss catches you as you walk out the door and says he needs a file restored for a presentation first thing in the morning.  You say, “No problem, I will restore it real quick before I head home.”  You head to the DPM server and try and open the console.  To your dismay, the console will not open.  You inform your boss of the situation.  He asks if there is any way at all to restore the file because he cannot wait until the morning.  You remember that when you installed DPM that it required PowerShell.  Maybe there is a way to restore files from the DPM Management Shell?  You are exactly right!  But you have never done it.

This blog will walk you through the steps of doing a simple file restore from Powershell.

From previous blogs you learned some of the fundamentals of Powershell; specifically arrays and index values.  In this PowerShell cmdlet you will put that knowledge to the test.

This is the command as listed in Technet:

Recover-RecoverableItem [-RecoverableItem] <RecoverableObject[]> [-RecoveryOption] <RecoveryOptions> [-RecoveryPointLocation <RecoverySourceLocation[]>] [-JobStateChangedEventHandler <JobStateChangedEventHandler>] [-RecoveryNotification <Nullable`1>] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>]

 

Looks too difficult to attempt at 6:15PM right?  Wife is waiting for you to eat dinner, kids need their baths, etc… Sound familiar?

Let’s simply this cmdlet; you will need some information to do the recovery.

What you will need:

1.       Recoverable Object

2.       Recovery Options

3.       Recovery Point Location

First we need to get a recoverable object. Easy enough right?  Wrong, it requires three variables and those have to be indexed into the get-recoverypoint cmdlet so technically you get two cmdlets for the price of one in this blog.

You will be creating three variables

1.       $pg = get-protectiongroup –dpmservername dpmserver1

a.       This will return an array; assign an index value to the first one you see as 0, the second one will be 1, etc…

2.       $ds = get-datasource –protectiongroup[$pg_arrayindexvaluefromabove]

a.       This will return an array

3.       $rp= get-recoverypoint –datasource[$ds_arrayindexvalue]

4.       $gr = get-recoverableitem –recoverableitem $rp[0]

Once you have the above three variables created you can now determine which recovery point you want to restore.  No, we are not done yet but we now have most of the information necessary to perform the recovery.  Just a few more variables and we are done.

Let’s look at recover-recoverableitem again.  This time we will look at the bare minimum that you will need to get your bosses file restored so you can get out the door to go home.

Recover-RecoverableItem [-RecoverableItem] <RecoverableObject[]> [-RecoveryOption] <RecoveryOptions> [-RecoveryPointLocation <RecoverySourceLocation[]>]

 

Recover-recoverableitem requires 3 pieces of information.  We have the recoverable object in the array index value from $rp above.

We also need recovery options ($rop.)  This is another variable.  It takes information that you input and when the item is recovered, it uses these variables to overwrite the file, restore the file, etc…

 

Once we have the $rop variable we can finally restore the file.

You can see from the above screenshot that we are now in progress of putting the file back where it came from.

Walt Whitman

Support Escalation Engineer

Microsoft System Center Support

Everything you ever wanted to know about SharePoint and DPM

 

Chris Whitehead, who is a Premier Field Engineer for SharePoint in the UK and a fan of DPM, recently posted a series of blogs on SharePoint and DPM.

One of the things that we like about Chris is that he has a different point of view. 

- We in the DPM team think about “backing stuff up” … and what is necessary to protect each workload, such as SharePoint.

- Chris thinks about SharePoint … how to deploy it, how to manage it, how to troubleshoot it, and how to back it up.

Chris’ perspective has helped us build a better protection and recovery experience for SharePoint, and hopefully his blogs will help you too.

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 1 - A love/love relationship

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 2 - How does DPM protect SharePoint data?

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 3 - How does DPM restore SharePoint data?

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 4 - Why do I get this error?

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 5 - What's coming next?

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 6 - What about Search?

· DPM and SharePoint - Part 7 - OK, you've convinced me, where do I find out more?

Thanks Chris !!

New Whitepaper – How to do Bare Metal Recovery of WS 08 with DPM 2007

Those of you running DPM 2007 SP1 today know that we offer a “Bare Metal Recovery” (BMR) capability through the DPM System Recovery Tool (SRT) for Windows Server 2003 machines.

However, the SRT model of BMR doesn’t work well with Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, so we chose to not significantly re-write SRT for those platforms.

Instead, the in-box capability of image level backups and system state protection that is included with WS08 does a good job.  But what makes it great is to centrally manage the execution of those System State and Bare Metal Recovery backups.

To facilitate this in DPM 2007 SP1, we published a whitepaper with all of the pertinent steps.  Some of you may have downloaded an earlier version of a similar whitepaper, but we’ve updated it as of November 2009, so we encourage you download the latest guidance.

Click here to download the whitepaper – How to do Bare Metal Recovery of Windows Server 2008 with Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007.

Hyper-V Protection with DPM 2010 Beta - How to automatically protect new Virtual Machines

We had a great question come into the DPM Newsgroup recently. How do I automatically protect new VMs added to a Hyper-V host using DPM?

In any virtualized environment, adding new VMs is a frequent operation. While backup administrators can protect an entire Hyper-V host using the DPM Management Console, the protection group had to be modified manually to include the new virtual machines that have come up on the Hyper-V host.

This blog post aims to make this an automated task by adding new virtual machines to protection on the given Hyper-V hosts using simple PowerShell scripts. These scripts are expected to work with DPM 2010 Beta. By using the information in this blog post, you should be able to quickly put together a script that can enable the auto protection of your hyper-v hosts.

Download Scripts :  AddNewClusteredVM.ps1  and AddNewStandAloneVM.ps1

Note: These scripts work on an existing protection group and do not create a fresh protection group.

 

The attached scripts automate the task of adding any new virtual machines recognized in the Hyper-V hosts protected by the DPM server into existing protection groups. There are different scripts for Hyper-V clusters (AddNewClusteredVM.ps1) and standalone Hyper-V hosts (AddNewStandAloneVM.ps1). You would still use the script for standalone servers to automatically protect the non-clustered virtual machines of any Hyper-V host that is part of a cluster.

 

Let us now walk you through the scenario and the scripts...

Walk Through

Protecting standalone Hyper-V hosts

The script for standalone servers (AddNewStandAloneVM.ps1) takes as input the following two values in order:

Variable	Explanation	Example
Server Name	Fully Qualified Domain Name of the Hyper-V host server.	hyperv01.contoso.com
Protection Group	Name of the existing protection group to which we are adding the new virtual machines.	Protection Group 3

 

The script performs the following tasks:

1. Takes FQDN of protected server and name of protection group as input.

2. Searches for the protected server and the protection group.

3. Runs inquiry on the Hyper-V host and obtains the list of unprotected virtual machines.

4. Adds the obtained list of virtual machines to the protection group.

5. Saves the changes to the protection group and exits.

 

Example usage:

This example takes the following values as inputs:

hyperv01.contoso.com – replace this with the name of your Hyper-V host

dpm-server01.contoso.com – replace this with the name of your DPM server

PS C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\bin> .\AddNewStandAloneVM.ps1 hyperv01.contoso.com "Protection Group 3"

Name                                                     Domain

----                                                         ------

dpm-server01.contoso.com                CONTOSO.COM

Running Inquiry on hyperv01.contoso.com

Adding data source Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\StandaloneVM to Protection Group 3

Adding new Hyper-V data sources to Protection Group 3

Exiting from script

Protecting Hyper-V clusters

The script for clustered servers (AddNewClusteredVM.ps1) takes as input the following two values in order:

Variable	Explanation	Example
Cluster Name	Fully Qualified Domain Name of the Hyper-V cluster.	csv01.contoso.com
Protection Group	Name of the existing protection group to which we are adding the new virtual machines.	Protection Group 2

 

The script performs the following tasks:

1. Takes FQDN of protected cluster and name of protection group as input.

2. Searches for the protected cluster and the protection group.

3. Runs inquiry on the cluster to get the list of resource groups.

4. Runs parallel inquiry for each resource group and obtains the list of unprotected virtual machines under them.

5. Adds the unprotected virtual machines to the protection group.

6. Saves the changes to the protection group and exits.

The difference in this script is in Step 3 & 4 in AddNewClusteredVM.ps1 where we run inquiry on the cluster to get the list of resource groups, followed by inquiry on the resource groups. Also, inquiry on resource groups is run in parallel unlike what we do for standalone servers. We run inquiry in parallel for the cluster to avoid a performance overhead. Such an overhead is not seen for standalone servers.

Example usage:

This example takes the following values as input:

csv01.contoso.com – replace this with the name of your Hyper-V cluster

dpm-server01.contoso.com – replace this with the name of your DPM server

PS C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\bin> .\AddNewCLusteredVM.ps1 csv01.contoso.com "Protection Group 2"

Name                                                     Domain

----                                                        ------

dpm-server01.contoso.com                CONTOSO.COM

Running Inquiry on csv01.contoso.com

Running Inquiry on Cluster Group

Running Inquiry on Available Storage

Running Inquiry on SQLLoadVM

Running Inquiry on SharepointLoadVM

Running Inquiry on Win7VM

Waiting for inquiry to complete 0 item(s) obtained...

.

Waiting for inquiry to complete 1 item(s) obtained...

.

.

Waiting for inquiry to complete 5 item(s) obtained...

Inquiry listed 5 item(s)...

Adding data source Backup Using Child Partition Snapshot\Win7VM to Protection Group 2

Adding new Hyper-V data sources to Protection Group 2

Exiting from script

You can now write a batch file to call the above scripts one after the other and schedule it using the Windows Task Scheduler to run as frequently as needed.

Important:

· Shared disks that may be listed under the resource groups of your Hyper-V cluster are not Hyper-V data sources, and are not considered for automatic addition using this script.

· Any new virtual machines that are finally added to a protection group are scheduled for immediate replica creation, overriding any existing protection group behavior. You may modify the respective script to change this after referring the specific cmdlet help option.

 

-- Angad Pal Singh | DPM Team (Author)

DPM 2010 Beta is available now

The Data Protection Manager (DPM) team at Microsoft is happy to announce the arrival of Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta. 

I am Anand Kamat, Group Product Manager for the DPM development team, and since shipping DPM 2007 SP1 in Jan 2009, we have been on an amazing journey to get this feature packed release out to all our customers. This release has been different than our usual model. We moved our development model to shorter milestones. Though it made our pace extremely hectic, it allowed us to validate and stabilize key features in batches (well before Beta). Our 50+ CTP customers have given us a thumbs up for the DPM 2010 Beta feature set; it is ready for the rest of the world to start working with; and our team is looking forward to hear from you.

There are many things that we are excited talk about (not in any particular order) :

Virtualization

This has been one of the biggest investments that we made in DPM 2010, and we hope that you will absolutely love the features.  First and foremost, DPM 2010 Beta protects highly available virtual machines (VM) deployed on Windows Server 2008 R2 using Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) clusters -- in addition to standalone Hyper-V servers and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V clusters. For all above mentioned server configurations, DPM 2010 Beta supports:

Seamless protection of Live Migrating VMs (For Windows Server 2008 R2): DPM 2010 is LiveMigration aware and seamlessly protects a VM after it migrates to another node of the Hyper-V R2 cluster to another without manual intervention.

Item Level Recovery from host level backup: DPM 2010 Beta supports item level recovery (ILR) which allows you to do granular recovery of files and folders, volumes and virtual hard disks (VHD) from a host level backup of Hyper-V VMs to a network share or a volume on a DPM protected server.

Original Location Recovery: DPM 2010 Beta supports online recovery of the protected VM to the original location.

Alternate Host Recovery: DPM 2010 Beta supports alternate location recovery (ALR) which allows you to recover a Hyper-V VM to an alternate stand-alone or clustered Hyper-V host.

Laptop Protection

Though we enabled client protection in DPM 2007 SP1, it was designed for desktops and not optimized for mobile/often-disconnected user. DPM 2010 laptop feature is completely built from scratch and offers an optimized experience for DPM Admin as well as the laptop user.

Seamless backups for roaming users (Backup over VPN, Backup when connected, Alert for SLA’s not met)

Rich support for folder inclusion/exclusion and file types exclusion

Integration with local Shadow Copies for Vista & W7

Scales up to 1000 clients per DPM server

Support for XP, Vista, and Win7

Reliability and Manageability

In addition to features, this is an area where we’ve made some really significant investments in DPM 2010, with special recognition of the feedback from our enterprise customers who are deploying DPM across the large Windows farms within their heterogeneous environments.

A new “Auto-Grow” feature that will extend the replica volume as the production data grows. 

You will see far fewer “Replica Inconsistent” errors and many of them will automatically get fixed by Auto-Rerun, Auto-CC (Consistency Check).

We have made DPM 2010 very flexible and robust to adapt for environment/configuration changes.

There is a new Backup SLA report that you can configure for your needs and get it emailed every day.  You can even view it in the Protection View of the DPM UI, so no more custom scripts to determine if you have met your backup requirements.

Other Good Stuff

In addition to the above, a few of the other areas of enhancement include:

Exchange - DPM 2010 extends robust Exchange protection to Exchange 2010 DAG clusters.

SharePoint - For SharePoint 2010, there is no recovery farm required for item level recoveries and backups are optimized for large scale deployments.

SQL Server – DPM 2010 now includes is Instance-Level Protection and with Datasource Collocation, you can backup SQL servers with ~700-800 DBs.  DPM 2007 provided optimized SQL backups and with SQL End User Recovery in DPM 2010, you should be able to give the control back to SQL Admin while retaining the storage benefits of DPM SQL backups.

Disaster Recovery replication (“DPM2DPM4DR”) - we have enabled cyclic protection (DPM A <==> DPM B) as well as chained (DPM A --> DPM B --> DPM C) protection for versatility in long-distance protection.

This beta marks an important step towards a highly reliable, manageable & scaled up DPM solution.   We have a great team that is focused on customers and we had many passionate DPM 2007 customers that become DPM 2010 CTP customers to give us a great deal of testing and needs insight before this beta was released.  I expect the same from DPM 2010 Beta customers as well – please tell us how you are using the product so that we can be sure DPM 2010 fits what you need in a data protection soltution.

So get ready to try the best ever DPM Beta release!   And for more info, please check out the updated webpages on microsoft.com/DPM and look for our webcast on October 8.

I feel extremely proud of what we have accomplished and am excited to hear your feedback!

Thanks

Anand

Webcast on Thursday – Cheaper, Better Backups with DPM 2007

On Thursday morning, 8AM Pacific, please join us for a discussion on reducing costs and improving your backup and recoverability with System Center Data Protection Manager. 

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032412440

Event Overview

In today’s economy, more than ever, IT Pro’s are looking for ways to reduce costs while still improving existing processes or fixing things that aren’t meeting expectations – including backup.  In this session, we’ll discuss legacy protection solutions for backup, disk-to-disk replication, and long-distance disaster recovery  -- and how you can cut costs while gaining better backups and more reliable recoveries with System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.

Duration:  60 Minutes

Start Date:  Thursday, July 16, 2009 8:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Presenter: Jason Buffington, Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Jason has been working in the networking industry since 1989, focusing mainly on data protection and storage technologies - including roles at Cheyenne/CA for ARCserve and NSI Double-Take. He is previously a Certified Business Continuity Planner, MCSE, MCT, and was awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in storage technology.  Jason has spoken around the world at numerous Microsoft events, and his work has been published in several industry journals. Jason studied computer science at Texas A&M University. He lives in Dallas Texas, telecommutes to Redmond, and blogs at JasonBuffington.com. 

DPM v3 “First Look” – TechNet Webcast on May 5

On Tuesday, May 5th at 11 AM Pacific – we will be giving folks your “First Look” at DPM v3.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032412466

 

This webcast will cover the big features and directions for the next generation of DPM, so you won’t want to miss it.

CLI Script: Script to generate DPM configuration report

The attached script generates a report of the mapping between each Exchange Server, the backup Protection Groups and its associated SGs.

 

Krishna Mangipudi