Ctrl P - The Data Protection Manager Blog! : System Center

Customer Blog Post on DPM 2007 SP1 -- ICON

JasonBuffington — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:58:00 GMT

Hi, I’m Dan Taylor, a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to IT for ICON.

At my previous employer, I implemented a small VMware infrastructure and learned the value of virtualization quickly. When I came to ICON, they had a small VM deployment with Virtual Server 2005 and instead of trying to push VMware on them, I just went with it. We moved forward with virtualization on Virtual Server, but only for non mission critical needs, such as running our helpdesk software, our Blackberry server and our internet reporting server.

When Virtual Machine Manager 2007 came out, I started playing with P2V. Needless to say, it was so simple that we got carried away with it. We started virtualizing more important roles, such as our Pharmacy server, an interface server and our certificate server. All of these were light-load servers, but had business-critical status assigned to them. We realized that we needed to re-think what we were doing. Should we VM just because we can? How do we protect these servers? We also wanted to ensure a very high level of business continuity so that we have little, and if possible, no downtime for our operations. And of course, cost was a factor.

That is where DPM 2007 came in.

Its release could not have been timed better for us. It offered the capability to backup VM’s, and we definitely needed it at this point. We pushed to get it approved and implemented right away. Setup was very simple, but learning how to get reliable backups was not as easy. We found that our VM’s were not getting protected as we had expected. Come to find out, it is not a good practice to make one protection group for all of our VM’s. Through trial and error, we learned that multiple protection groups with four to five VM’s per group yielded very successful results, and we were off to the races!

It’s one thing to know you are backing something up, but what about the day when something goes wrong? We’ve had VM’s crash, and DPM has been very reliable for us at restoring those VM’s, and very quick, as well. I’ve never had to second guess whether I would be able to recover a VM with DPM.

When it came to Hyper-V, it had some of the features we needed, but I wanted to wait until it RTM’d to start putting servers into production. Then, again, came the question of building VM’s. Should we do it just because we can? I was fortunate enough to have met a couple of the product managers at Storage Networking World in 2008 and they invited me onto the TAP of DPM. They informed me that SP1 was to add protection of Hyper-V. As soon as the early bits to DPM SP1 became available, we jumped into Hyper-V in a big way, including our Exchange 07 servers.

Our experience has been quite a positive one. We found DPM’s ability to backup and restore Hyper-V VM’s more reliable than Virtual Server was when we first started testing the waters of DPM07. This year I also upgraded our Exchange Server from 2000 to 2007 and we created protection groups in DPM to do incremental backups of mailboxes throughout the day. This setup was seamless and we prefer it to Backup Exec’s support of Exchange07. We have plans for the 2009 budget to implement a second DPM server and do site-to-site replication of data for offsite storage. And in the end, all of this has helped us also realize a 10% increase in the time our IT staff has for strategic projects, so we can advance the value we’re delivering to the business, not just maintain our operations.

We are looking forward to the future capabilities of DPM!

New Sales Promotion -- get DPM Server licenses when you purchase System Center SMSE's

JasonBuffington — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:37:40 GMT

For those that are unfamiliar with DPM 2007 licensing, we just released a licensing podcast on Edge.Technet.com

In that DPM podcast on Edge, after we talk about the DPM licenses themselves, we talk about some cool benefits of acquiring your DPML's within the SMSE, instead of as 'standalone' licenses. And now, it gets even better !

With the acquisition of 200 or more System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE) licenses between December 1st 2008 and June 30th 2009, a Select, Select Plus or Enterprise Agreement customer will be deemed to have:

5 System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 server licenses
1 System Center Configuration Manager 2007 server license
1 System Center Operations Manager 2007 server license

Use of the above software licenses will be governed by the terms and conditions of the customer’s license agreement and the product use rights for the above products.

The customer’s right to use the above referenced products under this offering is evidenced by their license agreement, evidence of their qualifying SMSE licenses, and this product condition note. The right to use the above referenced server licenses expires upon expiration or termination of the qualifying SMSE licenses.

The customer has the option to acquire Software Assurance for the server licenses granted under this offering. That coverage must be acquired by no later than June 30th, 2009. Customers without media for any of the above products should contact their reseller for media fulfillment options. Media fulfillment charges may apply.

So, as you are looking at acquiring DPM 2007 (with SP1 eminently), if you are also looking at other management technologies from Microsoft, the SMSE is the right way to go -- and make sure you take advantage of this offer, if you can!

TechNet Radio -- Total Wine success story with System Center

JasonBuffington — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:11:00 GMT

Earlier this week, I sat down with our friends at Total Wine to talk about how they are using System Center.

It's one of the first times that I've gotten to talk about technology and 'wine' instead of 'whine" - so check out the TechNet Radio interview where we covered:

SC Data Protection Manager - replacing previous backup solutions that were unreliable and making backups 'fun'

SC Virtual Machine Manager - as the Total Wine Hyper-V deployment continues rolling out

SC Operations Manager - as the nerve center of all of TW's Microsoft and in-house applications

SC Configuration Manager - for deploying everything from new applications to replacement servers in remote stores

The audio shows 1 hour, but only the first 22 minutes are System Center with Total Wine - the rest is a Microsoft TechNet October Security Bulletins.

WMA | MP3 High | MP3 Low
To save to your computer, right click and choose 'save target as…'.

If you'd like to lock in to the DPM portion of the case study, there is about 3 minutes of good introduction on Total Wine's business and infrastructure - and DPM 2007 is covered from around 3:30 until 9:30.

To learn more about DPM and the rest of System Center in use at Total Wine - check out the Microsoft case study.

Our sincere thanks to Todd Slan and Robert DeSantos at Total Wine for allowing Microsoft System Center to partner with them in helping them manage the Total Wine infrastructure.

-- Jason

DPM 2007 licensing details -- a new video

JasonBuffington — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:14:00 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

DPM 2007 Management Packs: Available for Download

dpm — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:40:00 GMT

The Management Packs for DPM 2007 are now available for download.

1. System Center Operations Manager 2007 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fe7b09bd-cef0-4b96-9ffd-910e6be7fcea&DisplayLang=en

2. Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b55e4072-01c4-42d9-8cf6-050b631f6d50&DisplayLang=en

- Balaji Hariharan

DPM MOM Pack Users

dpm — Tue, 16 May 2006 04:24:00 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