Ctrl P - The Data Protection Manager Blog! : Behind the Scenes

TechNet CHAT live today - DPM Engineering talks about the updates to DPM 2007

JasonBuffington — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:39:39 GMT

DPM Engineering talks about the updates to DPM 2007

As part of equipping you around the new features provided in the Q2 rollup update for DPM 2007, the product team will be hosting a live chat session where you can ask your questions related to DPM 2007, the rollup, the upcoming SP1, or even provide suggestions for what you need to either deploy DPM 2007 or would like to see in DPM v3. Please join us for this collaborative and informational session.

Join us on the day of the chat:

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

9:00 A.M. - 10:00 A.M. Pacific Time

10:00 P.M. - 11:00 P.M. Mountain Time

16:00 - 17:00 GMT

Join the chat room on the day of the chat:

TechNet: www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx

DPM 2007 -- Calculating Disk Allocation

dpm — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:36:00 GMT

When you create a new Protection Group using the “Create Protection Group” wizard, DPM internally computes and allocates volumes for storing the replica and the shadow copies. This blog post enumerates the various formulae that we use internally to generate the default size.

File system datasource

SC size = (dataSourceSize * recoveryRangeInDays * 2) / 100 + 1 GB;

Replica size = (dataSourceSize * 3) / 2;

SQL DB

Replica size = dataSourceSize * (1 + LogChange) / (AlertThreshold - .05);

SC size = 2.5 * recoveryRangeInDays * LogChange * dataSourceSize + 1 GB

Exchange SG

replicasize = dataSourceSize * (1 + LogChange) / (AlertThreshold - .05);

SCSize = 4.0 * recoveryRangeInDays * LogChange * dataSourceSize + 1GB

where

Log change = 0.06

Alertthreshold = 0.9

- Mukul Singh Shekawat

DPM 2007 Launch Week - get the daily details

JasonBuffington — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:51:00 GMT

Hey DPM community...

If you want to get all of the exciting details on our launch event at Microsoft Tech-Ed IT Forum in Barcelona - check out my blog with daily updates

DPM is here, it's here, it's finally here ... to find out how its debut is coming, go to http://blogs.technet.com/jbuff

DPM v2 Beta2 - Docs and Support

dpm — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 20:11:00 GMT

Important docs:

You may download the following important Beta 2 documents from Connect downloads (https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=205&DownloadID=6599):

· Getting Started Guide

· Planning Guide

· Operations Guide

· Upgrade Guide

· System Requirements

· Deployment Guide

· Known Issues/Release Notes

· Troubleshooting Guide

Please also check out our beta FAQ

· Our beta FAQ can be found here (https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=3467&SiteID=205)

Technical Support

· For technical support, please join your fellow beta testers and the DPM Product team in the newsgroup (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/dgbrowser/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.dataprotectionmanager) to get questions answered and problems solved.

Thank you again for your valued participation in the DPM 2007 Beta!

- Balaji Hariharan

Usability Studies

dpm — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 07:17:00 GMT

Jeanie Decker and Deb Lewy recently sat in on usability testing for DPM v.2 screens. Why do writers care about usability? Because the easier the UI is to navigate, the easier it is to explain in the documentation. Our goal is to work with the product team to ensure that the UI design and UI text work together to provide an intuitive, consistent user experience.

The entire usability testing process was fascinating, as Jeanie attests to in her writer’s blog:

The lab is just large enough for a table, chair, and computer, and for 2 to 3 people to stand and talk. When the door is closed, it's a quiet room, no distractions. Adjoining the lab is the room I'll call the observatory, in which the tester and others can watch the participant through one-way glass. The participant (I'll call him Bob) was already settled in at his computer in the lab. I joined the usability expert, Tracy, and Amit, the user

interface designer, in the observatory. Bob had been given written goals for a task, and Tracy instructed him to explain his thoughts and actions as he proceeded. Now, this "thinking aloud" part is really critical. We don't want to interpret why the user is just looking at the screen while moving his mouse in circles; we want to hear "I'm trying to find a button that will let me start the task" or "I'm reading the screen; it's telling me that I don't have the resources to proceed.”

Bob was excellent at thinking out loud. Or perhaps Tracy was excellent at getting the best out of participants? Either way, good results. So, we watched Bob's monitor on a monitor in the observatory, listened as he explained what he was doing and thinking, and took lots of notes. Occasionally, Tracy prompted Bob to discuss how he would interpret different options on a screen. Bob would answer, "I'm guessing it means..." and his explanation would be correct, but I want to go back and figure out how to make

the choices less of a guess. Bob gave us lots of "I would have expected..." statements; those contain really valuable information. We want to know what the customer expectation is so we can meet it or manage it.

It was also helpful when he gave suggestions, such as "It wants me to type an e-mail address here; do I need the full address or can it resolve. And similarly answer all the difficult questions.

- Deb Lewy