DPM2012. Replacing Tape Drive with USB Drives

[SarumDave]

Hi,

 

We run DPM v4.1.3408.0 within System Center 2012 SP1 backing up fileshares to disk once an hour and a full backup to tape each evening. Fairly standard stuff..

 

Our ageing tape drive is beginning to fail, causing backup jobs to fail and a lack of confidence in the data integrity.

 

Rather than splash out on a new tape drive (and more tapes!) I'd like DPM to do a full backup to USB disk as (I'm sure) BackupExec used to do..

 

Having trawled around, I can't find a definitive yes or no. If yes, then how?

 

Any help appreciated.

 

Thanks

[themightymrp]

DPM as far as I am aware does not support USB drives. However I've read elsewhere that one possible solution is to run your DPM software inside a virtual machine (example Hyper-V). Then add the USB drives to the VM by connecting the physical disk to the virtual SCSI controller of the VM. The DPM machine will then see the drives as local physical disks rather than removable media. Set DPM to backup to disk instead of tape.

 

DISCLAIMER - I have never tried this method, or even used DPM for backups. We have BackupExec here

[Roberto]

DPM as far as I am aware does not support USB drives. However I've read elsewhere that one possible solution is to run your DPM software inside a virtual machine (example Hyper-V). Then add the USB drives to the VM by connecting the physical disk to the virtual SCSI controller of the VM. The DPM machine will then see the drives as local physical disks rather than removable media. Set DPM to backup to disk instead of tape.

 

DISCLAIMER - I have never tried this method, or even used DPM for backups. We have BackupExec here

 

Yikes! If there are concerns about data integrity then "trickin"g the backup software into using a method it doesn't support at all doesn't sound like the best way of improving that.