Ctrl P - The Data Protection Manager Blog! : Maintenance & Troubleshooting

CLI Script: DPM status report

dpm — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:50:00 GMT

The following script generates a comprehensive report of failures and the storage utilization for each Exchange Server that is protected by DPM on a per SG basis.

CLI Script: To generate status reports

dpm — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:42:00 GMT

The attached script generates a comprehensive report of the status of all backups and the storage utilization for each Exchange Server that is protected by DPM on a per SG basis.

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

dpm — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:46:00 GMT

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

Enabling/Disabling co-location of data on Tape

dpm — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:02:00 GMT

With DPM 2007 Feature Pack (KB949779), we have added support for media co-location. With this feature, you can achieve better tape utilization by co-locating data from multiple protection groups with similar retention range. This feature is disabled by default. You can use following PowerShell commands to enable and disable tape co-location.

Enable Tape co-location:

Set-DPMGlobalProperty -DpmServer <DPM Server Name> -OptimizeTapeUsage $true

Disable Tape co-location:

Set-DPMGlobalProperty -DpmServer <DPM Server Name> -OptimizeTapeUsage $false

You can verify the status of tape co-location feature (Enabled/Disabled) from Library Management tab of DPMUI.

The Feature Pack can be downloaded from following locations.

x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e9e1fe35-b175-40a8-8378-2f306ccc9e28&DisplayLang=en

x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ad5cd1a2-9b87-4a2c-90a2-9dbaf1024310&DisplayLang=en

Madhan S

Solving common DPM agent installation issues

dpm — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:33:00 GMT

This post is a summary of the most common support cases that we have been hearing so far in the area of DPM Protection Agent installation on a target server. We capture the following here in the excel sheet attached - common issues, why they fail, and the quick resolution steps to get past these issues. Hope this is useful, and let us know your feedback to make this better in future.

- Mukul Shekhawat, Balaji Hariharan

CLI Script: Auto re-running consistency checks

dpm — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:11:00 GMT

Some customers had non-DPM issues, like network issues because of which consistency check (CC) jobs failed too often. For the benefit of them, we have added a script that would re-try CC until it succeeds. Note: In some cases, CC would impact the protected computer’s performance and hence use this script appropriately.

- Vikash Jain

CLI Script: To recover a DPM replica volume from data stored in tape

dpm — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:39:00 GMT

When a disaster occurs, and you lose your replica volume for any datasource, you could re-seed the replica from the backed-up data you have in tape. This little script initializes replica from a tape recovery point. The parameters have to be customized for your environment first as given below.

Save the attached file as a .ps1 file and invoke through the DPM Management Shell.

- Madhan S

CLI Script: To remove all datasources in inactive protection state

dpm — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:51:00 GMT

The attached script removes all inactive datasources under a given DPM server. It provides options to remove inactive datasources on disk/tape/both. Save this as a .ps1 file and invoke it from inside the DPM Management Shell. Please contact us if you need any further assistance in running the script or face any issues.

- Madhan S

Troubleshooting tips for DPM 2007 - on the Windows Server Core blog

JasonBuffington — Fri, 02 May 2008 21:15:56 GMT

Hi folks,

There are some great DPM troubleshooting articles on the Windows Server 2008 core blog (http://blogs.technet.com/askcore) - which is maintained by the Microsoft Enterprise Windows Server Core Team.

Basic Troubleshooting of DPM 2007

Troubleshooting DPM agent deployments - part 1

Troubleshooting DPM agent deployments - part 2 (networking)

Supported Windows Server platforms for DPM 2007

And there are more coming, so stay tuned for more good depth info from the support team.

-- jason

DPM PowerShell Script -- invoking a Consistency Check

JasonBuffington — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:23:55 GMT

By design, DPM 2007 should be ‘fire and forget’ – meaning that after initial replication, data changes will automatically and routinely replicate.

However, due to a variety of external factors, the data set may become inconsistent. Usually, DPM will correct itself within a replication cycle. Depending on how often you have configured replication, this may not be soon enough. One resolution to this is to have one’s management solution (e.g. System Center Operations Manager) see the alert that a data set is inconsistent and then automatically run this ‘consistency check’ to revalidate the data in a more timely manner.

Attached is a sample PowerShell script to invoke a consistency check of on a DPM data source.

# This script do a consistency check on the file system data source. The parameters have to be initialized first as given below. Please give the values of parameters as appropriate for your environment. You can customize this easily as per your needs. Save the attached file as a .ps1 file and invoke through the DPM Management Shell.

$dpmname = "DPM Server Name";
$pgname = "My PG";
$dsname = "G:\";

function StartDatasourceConsistencyCheck
{
    param($dpmname, $pgname, $dsname, $isheavyweight)

    write-host "Start consistency check on $dsname "

    trap{"Error in execution... $_";break}
    &{
        write-host "Getting protection group $pgname in $dpmname..."
        $clipg = Get-ProtectionGroup $dpmname | where { $_.FriendlyName -eq $pgname }

         if($clipg -eq $abc)
          {
              Throw "No PG found"
          }

        write-host "Getting $dsname from PG $pgname..."
        $ds = Get-Datasource $clipg | where { $_.logicalpath -eq $dsname }

        if($ds -eq $abc)
         {
              Throw "No Data Source found"
         }

        if( $isheavyweight -ne "true")
        {
            write-host "Starting light weight consistency check..."
            $j = Start-DatasourceConsistencyCheck -Datasource $ds
            $jobtype = $j.jobtype
            if(("Validation") -notcontains $jobtype)
                {
                    Throw "Shadow Copy job not triggered"
                }
            while (! $j.hascompleted ){ write-host "Waiting for $jobtype job to complete..."; start-sleep 5}
            if($j.Status -ne "Succeeded") {write-host "Job $jobtype failed..." }
            Write-host "$jobtype job completed..."
        }
        else
        {
            write-host "Starting Heavy weight consistency check..."
            $j = Start-DatasourceConsistencyCheck -Datasource $ds -HeavyWeight
            $jobtype = $j.jobtype
            if(("Validation") -notcontains $jobtype)
                {
                    Throw "Shadow Copy job not triggered"
                }
            while (! $j.hascompleted ){ write-host "Waiting for $jobtype job to complete..."; start-sleep 5}
            if($j.Status -ne "Succeeded") {write-host "Job $jobtype failed..." }
            Write-host "$jobtype job completed..."
        }

    }
}

#Example for usage

StartDatasourceConsistencyCheck $dpmname $pgname $dsname "false"
StartDatasourceConsistencyCheck $dpmname $pgname $dsname "true"

-- Mukul

CLI Script: Run consistency check on invalid datasources

dpm — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:21:00 GMT

This script runs a consistency check job on all the protected datasources that are in the invalid state and tracks the set of jobs while giving progress on the screen. Save this script as a .ps1 file and run it. Usage and examples of scripts can be found by calling them with ‘-?’ or ‘-help’ from inside DPM Management Shell.

This is for manually running the job. Btw, for running the check on a regular scheduled basis, then use Get/Set-ProtectionJobStartTime and DPM will automatically run the consistency check (for all datasources) at the specified time.

----------------------------------- Start of Script --------------------------------

param ([string] $DPMServerName)

if(("-?","-help") -contains $args[0])
{
    Write-Host "Description: This script runs a consistency check on all the actively protected datasources which are not in valid state."
    Write-Host "Usage: Validate-InvalidDatasources.ps1 [-DPMServerName] <Name of the DPM server>"
    Write-Host "Example: Validate-InvalidDatasources.ps1 mohitc02"

exit 0
}

if (!$DPMServerName)
{
$DPMServerName = Read-Host "DPM server name"

    if (!$DPMServerName)
    {
        Write-Error "Dpm server name not specified."
        exit 1
    }
}

if (!(Connect-DPMServer $DPMServerName))
{
Write-Error "Failed to connect To DPM server $DPMServerName"
exit 1
}

$jobList = @()
foreach ($datasource in @(Get-Datasource -DPMServerName $DPMServerName | ? {$_.Protected -and $_.State -eq "Invalid"}))
{
$jobList += @{Job = Start-DatasourceConsistencyCheck -Datasource $datasource; Datasource = $($datasource.LogicalPath)}
}

$completedJobsCount = 0
while ($completedJobsCount -ne $jobList.Length)
{
$completedJobsCount = 0
Write-Host ""

    foreach ($jobHT in $jobList)
    {
        if ($jobHT.Job.HasCompleted)
        {
            Write-Host "Consistency check on $($jobHT.Datasource) completed. Status: $(($jobHT.Job).Status)"
            $completedJobsCount += 1
        }
        else
        {
            Write-Host "Runnning consistency check on $($jobHT.Datasource)..."
        }
    }

sleep 5
}

--------------------------------- End of script -------------------------------------

- Mohit Chakraborty