How does DPM really protect data?

re: How does DPM really protect data?

Rob Sanders — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 11:38:21 GMT

Thanks for video, it's really enlightening about how DPM 2007 works. I will show it to my coworkers at our next meeting.

How does DPM really protect data?

Ctrl P - The Data Protection Manager Blog! — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:37:04 GMT

This entry probably should have been a cross-posted ... but please check out my individual blog's latest

Can your backup solution do this?

Keith Combs' Blahg — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 02:03:27 GMT

No? Well then you need to head on over to the DPM Team blog or Jason Buffington's blog and start learning

Backing up with Data Protection Manager

Matt Hester's WebLog — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 01:01:29 GMT

One of my buddies in Texas, Jason Buffington is a product manger in the Storage Server group and is a

re: How does DPM really protect data?

Joe N — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:07:35 GMT

How about a deep dive on a DPM restore of Exchange and SQL? That would help explain things out more clearly and answer a lot of questions about scenarios possible with DPM.

re: How does DPM really protect data?

JasonBuffington — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:33:55 GMT

that's a great idea, Joe N ...

Look for that in a future deep dive segment!

others that I have been asked for is:

1) how does disk allocation work on the DPM server?

2) ideas on how to determine fan-in or ratio of production servers to DPM server

Keep the good ideas coming !!

re: How does DPM really protect data?

felix — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:46:32 GMT

You seem to of contradicted yourself in article, you state the 2007 does not use a filter, and is different from DPM 2006 because of this, but, you then go on to say the 2007 DPM uses a filter driver.

And because the DPM 2007 filter monitors changed blocks, instead of changed files...

Still confused.

-Felix

re: How does DPM really protect data?

JasonBuffington — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:39:15 GMT

Thanks Felix - let me clarify.

DPM 2006 uses a File System Filter (sitting around IO MGR) and monitoring file system changes on their way to NTFS - literally like "Change File X contents from A to B". Every file write is captured, copied, and held on a local Sychronization Log - to be sent hourly to the DPM 2006 server. Then each file operation is essentially replayed to update the DPM copy of the data.

DPM 2007 uses a filter/driver which monitors blocks on the disk. As disk blocks get updates, we flip a memory based bit denoting it is different. At the scheduled time, we use VSS writer to momentarily provide us the quiesced blocks.

In between, DPM 2007 can protect data every fifteen minutes from transaction based applications like SQL Server or Exchange, by copying the transaction log(s) changes - again not as a filter, but by simply reading the logs.

DPM 2007 doesnt use a sync log and cause repetitive IO on the production server, it doesnt mimic individual NTFS file operations, etc.

Hope that helps.

jason

What's interesting about Data Protection Manager 2007 ???

Keith Combs' Blahg — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:22:10 GMT

Like many of you, I have spent a fair amount of time testing, designing and deploying all types of systems.