Ctrl P - The Data Protection Manager Blog! : Tips 'n Tricks

CLI Script: Script to generate DPM configuration report

dpm — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:54:00 GMT

The attached script generates a report of the mapping between each Exchange Server, the backup Protection Groups and its associated SGs.

Krishna Mangipudi

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

DPM CLI Tips 'n Tricks: Powershell Basics - Part II

dpm — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:32:00 GMT

Tab Completion

The most fascinating part of DPM Management Shell is Tab Completion of cmdlets. By learning the common verbs in Powershell (like Get, Set, Start etc.), a Windows or an Exchange admin can easily use that knowledge and learn the DPM cmdlets. This is because the same verbs are used in DPM Management Shell too.

For example: To get the list of protected servers backed-up by a DPM server, one needs to just type Get-P and keep pressing tab. This would result in Powershell suggesting the various cmdlets, and you can choose the right one needed. The ones that you would see in this example are - Get-Process, Get-ProductionCluster, Get-ProductionServer etc.

In addition, if you can also tab complete the various parameter names too in the same way, by typing a “-“ after the cmdlet name and pressing tab.

Examples of cmdlet usage(Get-Help <cmdlet> -example)

Getting directly to the example usage of a cmdlet can be done easily with optional parameters in Get-Help - Get-help <cmdletname> -example. This will directly print only the example usages of the cmdlet:

For example:

PS D:\> Get-help Get-ProtectionGroup -example

NAME

Get-ProtectionGroup

SYNOPSIS

Retrieves the list of protection groups on the DPM server.

EXAMPLE 1

Get-ProtectionGroup -DPMServerName TestingServer

This command returns the protection group on a DPM server.

Getting only the cmdlet syntax (Get-Command <cmdlet> -syntax)

Another quick help about the syntax of cmdlet would be get by typing

PS D:\> Get-Command Get-Datasource -syntax

Get-Datasource [-DPMServerName] <String> [-Inactive] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>]

Get-Datasource [-ProductionServer] <ProductionServer> [-Async] [-Inquire] [-Replica] [-Tag <Object>] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>]

Get-Datasource [-ProtectionGroup] <ProtectionGroup> [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>]

Get-Datasource [-DPMServerName] <String> [-SearchPath] <String> [[-ProductionServerName] <String>] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>]

Using the object member properties (Get-Member)

With the help of get-member you can verify/set the property of the object.

PS D:\> $pg = Get-ProtectionGroup “MyDPMServerName”

PS D:\> $pg | get-member

TypeName: Microsoft.Internal.EnterpriseStorage.Dls.UI.ObjectModel.OMCommon.ProtectionGroup

Name MemberType Definition

---- ---------- ----------

AddProtectableObject Method System.Void AddProtecta...

AddProtectionOptions Method System.Void AddProtecti...

FriendlyName Property System.String FriendlyN...

InitializationType Property Microsoft.Internal.Ente...

Now these properties can be used to filter and get a specific PG.

For Example:

$clipg = Get-ProtectionGroup $dpmname | where { $_.FriendlyName -eq $pgname }

CLI Help Updates and Errata

Any additional help information or errata gets updated per cmdlet and is available at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=95130.

- Mukul Shekhawat, Balaji Hariharan

DPM CLI: Quick reference help

dpm — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:15:00 GMT

While using the DPM Management Shell, one would like to have a list of all cmdlets and its short help for quick reference. Also, we heard it would be useful to group the various cmdlets by the function they do – e.g. Library, Disk, Recovery or Protection related etc. Keeping this in mind, we have published this quick reference for you based on DPM 2007 Management Shell. You could take a print out of this and keep it handy while creating scripts. Btw, new cmdlets or parameters may be introduced in future versions or service packs of DPM, so you might want to update this list manually.

- Mukul Shekhawat, Balaji Hariharan

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

DPM CLI Tips 'n Tricks: Powershell Basics

dpm — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:47:00 GMT

The scripts posted in this blog require knowledge of Powershell and DPM cmdlets. So we thought we would present some tips ‘n tricks to become power users!

Introduction

The first difference between any normal Command Line Interface (CLI) (typically, Windows cmd.exe based environment) & Powershell is that, Powershell is a full blown .Net environment and is object oriented. In other words, it treats all input/output parameters as objects and when you pipe one command to another, objects flow instead of plain text as in old shells. Similarly, DPM Management Shell also takes inputs in the form of objects – for example, DPM, Protection Group, Datasource, Library, Tape, Tape Drive, Disk etc. are all .Net objects. Let’s now move on to more interesting stuff.

Finding cmdLets (Get-Command or gcm)

For knowing all the cmdLets present in the Powershell instance, use Get-Command (or gcm in short). When run, the output will be something like this:

PS D:\ > Get-command

CommandType Name Definition

----------- ---- ----------

Cmdlet Add-Content Add-Content [-Path] <String[...

Cmdlet Add-DPMDisk Add-DPMDisk [-DPMDisk] <Disk...

Cmdlet Add-History Add-History [[-InputObject] ...

Cmdlet Add-Member Add-Member [-MemberType]

Cmdlet Add-PSSnapin Add-PSSnapin [-Name] <String...

Cmdlet Add-Tape Add-Tape [-DPMLibrary] <Libr...

Cmdlet Clear-Content Clear-Content [-Path] <Strin...

Finding DPM cmdLets (Get-DPMCommand)

Similarly for getting all the cmdLets belonging to only DPM, use the Get-DPMCommand.

PS D:\ > Get-DPMCommand

CommandType Name Definition

----------- ---- ----------

Cmdlet Add-DPMDisk Add-DPMDisk [-DPMDisk] <Disk...

Cmdlet Add-Tape Add-Tape [-DPMLibrary] <Libr...

Cmdlet Connect-DPMServer Connect-DPMServer [-DPMServe...

Cmdlet Disable-DPMLibrary Disable-DPMLibrary [-DPMLibr...

Cmdlet Disable-TapeDrive Disable-TapeDrive [-TapeDriv...

How to use a cmdlet?

1. Understanding the cmdlet parameters (Get-Command and Format-List)

There are two parts to understanding a cmdlet. First, to look at the various input parameters and various usages, you can use the Get-Command itself on a specific cmdlet, in the following fashion – Get-Command <cmdlet> | format-list (or gcm <cmdlet> | fl, in short).

PS C:\> gcm Set-Alias | fl

Name : Set-Alias

CommandType : Cmdlet

Definition : Set-Alias [-Name] <String> [-Value] <String> [-Description <String>] [-Option <ScopedItemOptions>] [-PassThru] [-Scope <String>] [-Force] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm]

2. Reading Help documentation for a cmdlet (Get-Help or help)

For reading the Help documentation for any cmdlet use the following (Get-Help or help)

Get-Help <cmdlet>

For example:

PS D:\ > Get-Help Add-Tape

NAME

Add-Tape

SYNOPSIS

Adds a tape to a DPM library.

SYNTAX

Add-Tape [-DPMLibrary] <Library> [-Async] [-JobStateChangedEventHandler <Jo

bStateChangedEventHandler>] [<CommonParameters>]

…..

3. Getting detailed help, and seeing sample scripts

For seeing additional information on each of the cmdLets, you can use the –Full or –Detailed parameters in Get-Help.

e.g. Get-Help Add-Tape –Detailed

Get-Help Add-Tape –Full

DPM Object Properties (Get-Member or gm)

The DPM cmdlets are logically divided in three groups Protection (Backup), Recovery and Management related (Library & Disk). All the tasks that can be done from the DPM UI in these areas, can be done from the cmdLets in these areas. Infact, the CLI provides additional features than the UI, in some scenarios.

You can get the member properties of any object by pipelining the output to Get-Member:

For example:

$lib = Get-DPMLibrary -DPMServerName “Testing Server Name”

$lib | Get-Member

Will give all the members of $lib (Library object).

PS D:\ > $lib | get-member

TypeName: Microsoft.Internal.EnterpriseStorage.Dls.UI.ObjectModel.LibraryMan

agement.Library

Name MemberType Definition

---- ---------- ---------

ClearCache Method System.Void ClearCache()

Dispose Method System.Void Dispose()

We hope this was useful, feel free to add comments as feedback to this post. And in the next version, we can add more tricks!

- Mukul Shekawat, Balaji Hariharan

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

Script: Auto-add new SQL DBs for protection

dpm — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:00:00 GMT

This is a sample script that will automatically add all the newly available SQL DBs in all instances for protection. You can customize this easily to change the protection policy. Save the attached file as a .ps1 file and invoke through the DPM Management Shell. The script can also be added to the Windows scheduler and run on a scheduled basis.

- Kapil, Hitesh, Balaji

Data Protection Manager 2007 Storage Calculator

dpm — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 08:21:00 GMT

In order to assist customers in designing their storage layout for Data Protection Manager 2007, we have put together a calculator that focuses on outlining the storage capacity requirements based on a set of input factors.

For the first release, the calculator focuses on Exchange 2007 backup scenarios only. Future releases may include other technologies.

The calculator uses all the recommendations outlined in

· Protecting Exchange Server with DPM 2007 White Paper - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=92497

· Exchange 2007 Planning Storage Configurations - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124518.aspx

· Exchange 2007 Mailbox Storage Calculator - http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/01/15/432207.aspx

· DPM Blog - http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/

The calculator does not make any recommendations toward storage design (RAID parity, number of disks, etc) as the storage design is largely dependent on the type of storage array being utilized.

The calculator is broken out into the following sections (worksheets):

· Input

· DPM ExBackup Requirements

Important: The data points provided in the calculator are an example configuration. As such any data points entered into the Input worksheet are specific to that particular configuration and do not apply for other configurations. Please ensure you are using the correct data points for your design.

Input

This section is where you enter in all the relevant information regarding your design, so that the calculator can generate what you need in order to achieve your design.

Note: There are many input factors that need to be accounted for before you can design your solution. Each input factor is briefly listed below; there are additional notes within the calculator that explain them in more detail.

Exchange Server Configuration

1. How many Exchange mailbox servers are there? Enter the number of Exchange mailbox servers that will be backed up by DPM.

2. How many databases will each Exchange server have? Enter the number of databases each Exchange server will have. This value can be obtained from the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Storage Requirements Calculator's Storage Requirements tab "Database Configuration" table.

3. What is the LUN Design Architecture? Enter the LUN Design architecture each Exchange mailbox server will use. This can be obtained from the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Storage Requirements Calculator's LUN Requirements tab "LUN Design" table.

4. What is the total database disk space required? Enter in the total amount of disk that will be used by each Exchange mailbox server. This can be obtained from the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Storage Requirements Calculator's Storage Requirements tab "Disk Space & Performance Requirements" table by referring to the "Total Database Disk Space Required / Replica" value.

5. What is the average transaction log generation rate per storage group each day? Enter the total logs generated on the server. This can be obtained from the Exchange 2007 Mailbox Storage Requirements Calculator's Storage Requirements tab "Server Configuration" table by referring to the "Average Transaction Logs Generated / SG / Day" value.

DPM VSS Backup Configuration

1. What is the backup rate? Enter in the rate at which you can backup your Exchange data. The actual back rate that can be achieved will depend on three things:

a. Read rate from source LUN – if designed properly, this should not be a huge problem unless you run backup during peak times or you’re running multiple threads from the same set of disks.

b. Effective write rate at the medium- This is the speed with which DPM can write to the storage pool disks. When doing initialization, the writes are typically sequential in nature. However for express fulls, the writes are typically random in nature.

c. The network rate - It is recommended that you use a Gbps network connectivity between the Exchange server and the DPM server. DPM can also be configured to use a dedicated NIC to perform the backups thereby getting a higher throughput without loading your corporate network.

2. What is the restore rate? Enter the rate at which you can restore your data.

3. What is the VSS Backup Frequency? Enter the frequency at which you perform an incremental backup synchronization. This value determines your point in time copy, and thus affects your recovery point objective. You can choose from 15 minutes all the way up to once per day.

4. What is the retention range? The retention range specifies how long you want to keep a backup so that you can recover it. After the retention period, the backup is deleted from DPM.

5. What is the Express Full frequency? Specify how often you wish to perform an express full backup, either daily or weekly. Express full backups take more time than an incremental synchronization, but the benefit of more frequent express fulls is that the time for a recovery is reduced since fewer logs need to be played back in order to restore to a point in time.

DPM ExBackup Requirements

This section outlines the capacity requirements for the DPM server.

Calculations

The Calculations Pane performs all the calculations based on the input factors and outputs the key calculations into the Results Pane. For this blog, I will not delve into the specifics of the calculations, but feel free to review them within the calculator.

Results

Based on the above input factors, the calculator will recommend the following settings.

Backup Configuration

The Backup Configuration table will provide you with

· The Number of Databases / LUN, which is derived from the LUN Design Architecture model chosen.

· The Backup Methodology, which in this case, since we are using DPM, will always be a VSS backup.

· The Backup Frequency, which was an option selected on the input worksheet.

Backup Window Requirements

The Backup Window Requirements table will provide you with

· The Express Full Backup Window / SG is the amount of time it will take to back up a single storage group via an Express Full backup. A DPM express full backup is basically a full backup that only needs to transfer the changed blocks since the last express full. Hence this is faster and requires sending lesser data across the network in order to perform the full backup. You should validate this metric against your Service Level Agreements to determine if it is acceptable.

· The Incremental or Differential backup Window / SG is the amount of time it will take to perform an incremental synchronization for a single storage group and is based on the number of transaction logs that are generated during the backup window.

DPM Server Configuration

The DPM Server Configuration table will provide you with

· The Recommended Number of DPM servers needed to support the Exchange infrastructure. This value is based on the number of storage groups (max 250 per server) or the DPM storage requirements (max 40TB).

· The Recommended Number of Processors Cores / DPM Server needed to support DPM. At the time of this writing, Microsoft recommends having 4 processor cores per DPM server.

· The Recommended RAM Configuration / DPM Server needed to support the DPM activities. At the time of this writing, Microsoft recommends having 8GB of physical memory.

· The Recommended Virtual Memory Configuration / DPM Server need to support DPM activities. This value is based on the amount of data being backed up.

· The Total Storage Capacity Needed outlines the necessary capacity requirements to back up all the Exchange mailbox servers.

DPM Space Requirements / Exchange Server

The DPM Space Requirements table outlines the replica size and recovery point volume size for each storage group on an Exchange mailbox server.

DPM Protected Group Configuration Data / Exchange Server

The DPM Protected Group Configuration Data table outlines each protected group (based on the LUN Design Architecture and the number of databases housed on each LUN), the synchronization frequency for each protected group, the retention range, and the express full backup schedule.

Conclusion

Hopefully you will find this calculator invaluable in helping to determine your storage requirements for backing up Exchange 2007 using Data Protection Manager 2007. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email dpmcalc AT microsoft DOT com.

Download the calculator from the attachment to this post.

[The calculator has been updated on 12 June 2009]

Note: This calculator is saved in the new Excel 2007 format. If you are not running Office 2007, then you will need the compatibility pack for Office XP and 2003 which can be obtained from here.