Help needed - Idiots guide to DPM 2012

[mdrabble]

Ok, so Ive started a new job where they use DPM 2012 (which I have never used)

 

Couple of the back ups are showing Replica Inconsistent for a few of the jobs. I have tried performing a consistency check but no joy.

 

Can anyone give me any pointers on what I should be looking at to resolve these issues.

 

Also...... if I setup a 2nd DPM box, how could I replicate data between them?

 

Cheers

Edited November 25, 2014 by mdrabble
Added 2nd DPM question

[Sagima]

If you check the job in the Monitoring section (under failed jobs or all jobs and then the failed jobs subsection) it should give you some idea of what went wrong.

If you set up a second DPM server you can select which backups you want from the first server to also be backed up on the second (or all of them if you want an actual replica) in the same way you would backup any other server (with your primary)

[mdrabble]

The helpful details from DPM says..... (looking at Bare Metal Recovery and System State)

 

Status: Replica Inconsistent

Replica Path: Click to view details

Latest Recovery Point: -

Oldest Recovery Point: -

Total Recovery Points: 0

Disk Allocation: Replica Volume: 30.00GB allocated, 90.66MB used | Recovery point volume 3.07GB allocated, 43.54 used.

 

My googlefoo has deserted me today

[Sagima]

As it has never worked and that is not very helpful as messsages go i'm going to assume that the server you are backing up is 2008 or later in which case you need to install the windows backup feature on the server to backup system state

[mdrabble]

The protection group was configured to back up everything on that server.

 

I created another protection group and just added bare metal backup and system state and hey presto it backed up! (Windows back already installed)

 

So..... what is considered best practice when creating protection groups?

 

Cheers

[Sagima]

I'm not sure I follow best practice but it works for me.

 

I have a protection group for each server type - So a fileserver one, a sql one, an exchange one etc.

I don't do bare metal recovery though I do back up whole VMs in my Hyper-V protection group.

I stagger the back up times between 7pm and 6am for the protection groups. I don't use on wire compression. I do use allow the volumes to autogrow as needed and most things I back up for 64 days although I've never been asked to go back more than 4 weeks.

Backups don't run on weekends (except SQL)

I only synchronize just before a recovery point.

All back ups are currently at about 22TB (replicated so about 44TB in total).

[Achandler]

See my PM, I know exactly what the issue is.