Ctrl P - The Data Protection Manager Blog! : DPM 2006 (v1)

DPM 2007 licensing details -- a new video

JasonBuffington — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:14:00 GMT

Abridged blog Cross-Post - original at blogs.technet.com/JBUFF

DPM 2007 has a really simple licensing model:

DPM Server - for the back-end platform(s)
Standard DPML - for file protection
Enterprise DPML - for file and application platform

There aren't any Open File managers, library agents, etc.

You don't have to buy # Exchange Agents, # SharePoint agents, # SQL Server agents, etc. - and then, when you re-commission a server, or add SharePoint content databases to a SQL Server -- have to buy new agents.

The enterprise DPML provides a single agent for all of our supported workloads, or use the standard agent for "just" files.

Yes, it really is that simple.

In fact, because of the common binaries and the inexpensive price for both agents, many customers, particularly volume license types, may just choose to deploy the Enterprise DPML for all servers that need protection.

For the best information on DPM licensing - refer the DPM licensing page on microsoft.com/DPM.

There are also some DPM licensing details that are worth exploring, so I've recorded this short streaming video to explain things like:

- Upgrading SKU's and SA from DPM 2006 to DPM 2007

- Licensing for the System Recovery Tool (SRT) for bare metal restores

- Agent licensing within a virtualized environment

- Cool news on the System Center Management Suite licenses

Click here to watch the streaming video on DPM Licensing

And as always, please feel free to offer feedback or make suggestions for future videos on Data Protection Manager or other Windows storage technologies.

-- Jason Buffington

Announcing DPM 2006 Service Pack 1 Release to Web

dpm — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 14:41:00 GMT

Building on the focus of Data Protection Manager 2006 for disk-to-disk protection of file servers, Service Pack 1 (SP1) broadens the protection capabilities with support for protecting file server clusters, support for SIS (single-instance storage) enabled servers and support for X64 Windows servers. For more details...

•	Read What's New in Service Pack 1
•	Download Service Pack 1

SP1 RTW went live with 2 KB articles:

How to obtain the latest service pack for System Center Data Protection Manager 2006: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923706
How to upgrade from pre-release versions of DPM 2006 SP1: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926996

- Jon Jentzsch

DPM v1 wins award!

dpm — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 10:29:00 GMT

DPM wins the 2006 Network Storage Conference Annual STOR(SM) Award in the Data Protection category.

- Balaji Hariharan

DPM MOM Pack Users

dpm — Tue, 16 May 2006 01:24:00 GMT

If you would like to give us feedback about the DPM v1 MOM pack, now is the time. We need your help in filling up a questionnaire which includes giving feedback about existing MOM pack and adding suggestions on new features. Of course you have the option of beta testing the new pack as well. As you know, this helps us design the new pack to help you best.

Mail us at dpmtb[at]microsoft.com.

- Balaji Hariharan

Protecting Apps using DPM 2006

dpm — Wed, 03 May 2006 17:45:00 GMT

Data Protection Manager 2006 aka DPM V1 primarily caters to the file server protection market. But a lot of servers out there are application servers. So if you bought DPM V1, how do you ensure protection of your application servers?

DPM has a file system filter sitting on the IO stack of the protected server’s file system that tracks all writes – this enables DPM to protect open files without a hassle. While this may work for some applications, for some other apps (especially transaction intensive ones like Exchange and SQL) backing up open files may not be good enough. These applications often have their data resident on multiple files, with logical dependencies among these files.

Here is a set of kb articles that explains how DPM v1 can be used to protect application servers like SQL and Exchange.

"How to use Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 to help protect an Exchange server" (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909644/en-us).
"How to use Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 to help protect a SQL Server database" (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/910401/en-us).
“How to use System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2006 to help protect Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003” (http://www.support.microsoft.com/kb/915181).

The Data Protection Manager team is also working on directly supporting backups of important applications like Exchange and SQL in future versions of DPM.

Keep tuned in for more on this.

- Nirman Shetty

Test DPM v1 SP1 Beta...

dpm — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 13:25:00 GMT

Among the exsiting DPM V1 customers we are looking for customers who want to participate in our beta for Service Pack 1.

SP1 enables:

protection of 64 bit production servers
protection of production servers with Single Instance Store (SIS) enabled
allows for protection of clustered production servers
and has a roll up of all fixes

If interested in testing, shoot an email to dpmtb[at]microsoft.com

- Marc Kamstrup