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Known Issues and recommended solutions on Secondary Protection (Disaster Recovery)

1.       We have seen issues under Secondary DPM server when production server node is expanded in DPM UI, you do not see any datasources enumerated. As a result of this, you cannot add secondary protection for any of the datasources of that production server. This could happen due to one of the following reasons

a.       One of the Protection Groups in Primary DPM has a special character in its name (like &, %, >. < etc) or one of the protected members of Primary DPM has special characters.

b.      DPM Writer is not started in Primary DPM server

c.       DPM Agent (by name DPMRA) crashed on Primary DPM server or Production server. If this is the case, you will find eventlog entries in respective servers.

d.      Secondary DPM server could not enumerate datasources from production server.  Run the powershell script under section “Check-ProductionServer” in the attached file on Secondary DPM Server. This will tell you whether Secondary DPM can enumerate datasources on production server or not. Steps to run this script

                                                               i.      Copy the contents under the section “Check-ProductionServer” in the attached file to a file named as “Check-ProductionServer.ps1”.

                                                             ii.      Run the powershell script “Check-ProductionServer.ps1” on a powershell window on Secondary DPM Server

e.      You had manually installed x64 DPM agent on top of the DPM 20007 x64 Primary DPM. Normally, this is blocked. You cannot manually install DPM agent on a DPM server. But, we have a known issue on X64 version which unblocks this scenario. If this is the case, you will see an entry for “Microsoft System Center DPM Protection Agent” in Add/Remove programs.

 

General solutions for this problem:

                                 i.            Make sure that Protection Groups or Protected members in Primary DPM don’t have any special characters in their names. Rename all such Protection Groups in Primary DPM and retry secondary protection

                               ii.            Make sure that DPM Writer is enabled and started/running on the Primary DPM server

                              iii.            Make sure that DPMRA service hasn’t crashed on Primary DPM server or production server while adding secondary protection through Secondary DPM server.

                             iv.            Disable and Enable protection for the production server which exhibits symptom 4 above.

                               v.            Uninstall the “Microsoft System Center DPM Protection Agent” from Primary DPM server through Add/Remove programs. Run the batch script under section “UpdatePrimaryDPM” in the attached file on Primary DPM server. Steps to run this script.

-          Copy the script  under the section “UpdatePrimaryDPM” in the attached file to a new batch file called UpdatePrimaryDPM.cmd

-          Run UpdatePrimaryDPM.cmd <DPM Intall Path>

E.g.: UpdatePrimaryDPM.cmd “C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM”

2.       You get prerequisite not installed error while adding datasources for secondary protection. This might happen if the production server is a domain controller. Please contact Microsoft support if this is the case.

 

Thanks

Madhan S

 

Published Friday, July 11, 2008 8:46 PM by dpm
Attachment(s): IssuesWithSecondaryDPM.txt

Comments

Sunday, January 18, 2009 11:35 AM by Doing Backup of DC's | keyongtech

# Doing Backup of DC's | keyongtech

PingBack from http://www.keyongtech.com/983455-doing-backup-of-dcs

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 11:13 AM by sappelhans

# re: Known Issues and recommended solutions on Secondary Protection (Disaster Recovery)

Madhan S,

I have tried all of the steps from within this article and have not been able to have the protected servers appear when I try to enable secondary protection of another DPM server. I will explain...

We have two sites (Central site and North site)each with a DPM protecting the servers within each site, I have successfully configured the DPM on North site to protect the replicas of the DPM on the Central site.

I have deployed the agent from the Central DPM to the North DPM and it shows OK status but when I try to enable secondary protection it displays 0 protected servers? I have scoured the web for some ideas of what I may or may not be doing correctly and am out of ideas. I did find a few articles relative to using a DPM that was previously doing secondary backup and having to contact microsoft support to have them modify some SQL data table entries but thats all. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sunday, August 02, 2009 6:13 AM by shahid.roofi

# Major Fix required for DPM sp1

I have one DPM box at Head Quarter site and another at DR site and secondary protection is enabled.

The DPM that directly takes the backups with 15min deltas is working fine but the DR DPM which is serving as secondary protection is having a strange problem.

At certain point in time like after 1 day or so, recovery points stop getting populated, although although status is shown as green ! If manual recovery point is created, all works fine except that the new recovery points taken from primary DPM server are not updated in the list and thus cannot be selected !!!

I have two hotfixes also applied that are applicable since SP1.(KB963102 &  KB968579) for 32bit installation.

This is very misleading as through all the notifiactions and alerts everything is working as OK status but underlying there is such a big problem and right at the time of disaster you cannot have the last recovery point available !

The primary DPM is working fine, with all the recovery points getting updated right after 15 mins. But at teh DR site, after 6 hours, when it goes for replication, it does that successfully but the recovery points are simply not enlisted in GUI.

This is very very disappointing.......! as right at the time of disaster you only have to option to do recovery either from primary DPM or do a complete resync for all data from primary DPM which renders the whole solution as useless for WAN !

Machine is also updated to date (windows 2003 sp2).

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