System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 is here, and it (amongst all other features) enables you as an Exchange administrator to backup your Exchange 2010 environment, and DPM 2010 is DAG-aware!

Let’s see…

After installing SCDPM2010, I need to deploy a DPM agent. In my current Exchange organization, I have created a DAG, called DAG1, too which two Exchange 2010 mailbox servers belong, being E2010CHM1, and E2010MU2.

When I select the option to install an agent in the DPM Administrator Console, DPM will prompt me that there is a cluster found :-)

DPM detected that you have selected servers that are nodes of a server cluster. You have not selected other nodes that belong to the same server cluster. However, if the nodes are part of a Exchange 2010 DAG you need not protect all DAG nodes.

You can protect nonclustered data in the selected nodes without installing protection agents on the other nodes.

What does this mean?

If you have a DAG configured, and if you only deploy a DPM agent on some of the DAG members, you will be able to backup any of the databases homed on those DAG members. But you will not be able to backup any database that are only homed on DAG members that haven’t got a DPM agent installed!

For example, in my deployment, I have a DAG, called DAG1, with two member servers. I have deployed a DPM agent on E2010CHM1, and not on E2010MU2. Databases are distributed as followed in my Exchange deployment:

When creating a new Protection Group, I will see the DAG, but I won’t be able to select any database which is homed only on E2010MU2. I will be able to select any database homed on E2010CHM1.

As can be seen in the print screen below, I can not see the mailbox database called BHV, since it is only homed on E2010MU2!

After selecting for example the Management database, I need to supply some more information, like a name for the protection group:

And then some specific Exchange information. DPM can run the Eseutil integrity check, thereby reducing the load on the Exchange server itself. DPM will check the integrity using Eseutil, and will inform Exchange afterwards about the status of the backup.  DPM requires two files from Exchange in order to do this integrity check. You need to copy Ese.dll and Eseutil.exe from your Exchange server to the DPM bin directory, or you can install the Exchange management tools on your DPM server. I have chosen to copy the two files from my Exchange server to the DPM server.

Then there is specific question with regards to Exchange DAG Protection, you will need to assign your mailbox databases to either a Full Backup or to a Copy Backup. It is important to remember that you can only select one copy of a database for full backup, due to federated log truncation!

Specify your short term recovery goals…

Review the disk allocation…

Specify how you want DMP to create a replica of the data….

Define when you want consistency checks to run…

Review the summary…

And create the protection group…

Replication creation can begin…

And when done, you get a green OK :-)

And the files will be backed up on your selected drive:

And recovery can begin when and if needed :-)

Ilse

A while ago I got a question from someone regarding one of the new features in Exchange 2010, being text messaging. Question was “is it available”…

Looking at the TechNet article he referred to, it does state:

Source = http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298136.aspx

The following is a list of new text messaging features included in Exchange 2010:

• Missed call and voice mail notifications
• Calendar and agenda updates
• Text messages sent and received through Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010
• Text message synchronization with a mobile phone

So let’s see.

Requirements

You need to have a Windows Mobile device:

• Windows Mobile 6.1 + https://update.outlook.com/cabs/OutlookLiveSetup.cab
• Windows Mobile 6.5
• Exchange 2010

And once you have chosen to sync your text messages, you will see all messages sent and received appear in your inbox, like below:

You will also receive an email, notifying you that you are able to send SMS/text messages using OWA/Outlook from now on:

What can you do?

• Send an reply to text messages just as you would e-mail messages

• When entering more than 160 characters, an additional SMS text message will be created
• Messages can be sent to a phone number or to a contact which phone number is filled in
• Messages on the mobile device are synced and backed up on the server
• Messages on the device only show up in the text messaging area (not in Outlook Mobile)

How does it work?

When a text (sms) message is created using Outlook/OWA, it will be sent to Exchange.  Exchange will use EAS to send/sync the message to the users cell phone. The user’s cell phone will then send that message out over SMS.

When a user receives a text message, the sent message will be synced to the user’s mailbox using EAS.

Some Q & A

Q. What if I have more than one SMS Sync enabled phones connected to an account?

A. The most recently connected one will  be the one used to send the message

Q. Can I disable this feature as an administrator?

A. Yes, you can, using the Exchange Management Shell for example

Happy SMS/Text Messaging :-)

Ilse

Last week I was in Los Angeles, to deliver two sessions for The Experts Conference, one on how one can use Active Directory Rights Management Server to protect Exchange 2010, and one entitled “Exchange: On Premises or In the Cloud”.

During that last session, I promised to post all links I referred too, and here they are, or here it is, all links have already been gathered by Brett Hill, and posted here:

Quick-Reference for BPOS-S Technical Content

In addition, Tommy Clarke has posted a very nice comparison between Office Communications Online Standard, and Office Communications Server 2007 R2 last month, it’s available here:

Comparison Between Office Communications Online Standard and Office Communications Server 2007 R2

During my talk on Information Rights Management, the question came “how about Apple?”,  there is a double answer to this question:

• Using OWA, it is possible to consume IRM protected messages, and to create them, as taken from TechNet:

Source = http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd876891.aspx

Cross-browser, multiple platform IRM support   IRM in Outlook Web App offers cross-browser, multiple platform IRM support. IRM in Outlook Web App is supported in all browsers supported by Exchange 2010, including on Apple Macintosh and Linux operating systems

• Using the next version of Office for MAC:

Source = http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-provides-a-first-look-at-the-ribbonized-office-for-mac-2011/5231

“Microsoft officials announced in August 2009 that the company was working on a new version of its productivity suite for the Mac — which has been christened Office 2011 for Mac, officials said on February 11. Last year, Microsoft officials said the new suite would include Outlook in place of the current Entourage mail client, support for Microsoft’s information rights management (IRM) content protection, and support for Visual Basic.”

Ilse

After deploying DPM2010, you will need to deploy an agent on any client you want to protect.

You can choose to automatically deploy your agents, by running the wizard in the DPM 2010 Administrator Console:

Or you can choose to manually deploy an agent.

When deploying a DPM agent manually, there are two steps envolved:

1. Install the agent

2. Attach the agent to your DPM server.

Let’s have close look at these steps…

Step 1: Install the agent

To install the agent, you can use the source files available in the source files of DPM:

Or you can use the source files deployed on your DPM server:

When running the executable, you can immediately add the name of your DPM server, if you don’t, you need to run afterwards SetDPMServer, to configure the necessary security permissions for the DPM server, and to configure the firewall to enable DPM agent to interact with the DPM server.

When the agent has installed, I just need to press enter to close the window:

After running DPMAgentInstaller_x64.exe on my server E2010MU2, I need to run SetDPMServer as can be seen below.

Step 2: Attaching the Agent to the DPM Server

To attach the agent to the DPM server, you have two options:

• On your DPM server, launch the DPM Shell, and run the script Attach-ProductionServer

• Or use the new wizard introduced in DPM 2010 to attach your agent.

Open your DPM Administrator Console, go to Management, and select Install:

This will launch the Protection Agent Installation Wizard, and there you can select Attach agent:

Select the computer:

Specify a username, password, and domain for a domain account that has administrator rights on the computer that you want to attach to the DPM server.

Review the summary….

The protected computer will be attached :-)

And that’s it… now time to create protection groups, and get protected!

Ilse