MS Data Protection Manager

[leco]

Could someone give me a clue as to how much this is likely to cost? It looks like it's what I'm looking for, backups, management, monitoring, asset tracking etc, but the only pricing I can find is in dollars. (Yes I know I could convert but my maths brain is in holiday mode)

 

If you use it what is your opinion - does it work, is it easy to manage, is it worth it? I'm thinking that since I have a total MS environment I might as well have a management solution that is (supposedly) dedicated to the task. Your thoughts would be appreciated, thanks.

[AngryTechnician]

Are you on Software Assurance? I can give you rough prices for that based on my prices from last year.

[leco]

Are you on Software Assurance? I can give you rough prices for that based on my prices from last year.

 

School Agreement yes, thanks, will give me some idea of what I'm looking at (and if school can afford it)

[Soulfish]

DPM is very very cheap. The actual server costs virtually nothing on a schools agreement, but you have to remember you also need the server management licenses for your MS servers, and if you want to use the client backup tool you need client management licenses. With a schools agreement the simplest way to license the server management licenses is with System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise or System Center Server Management Suite Datacenter which are both very cheap. The licenses work the same way as Enterprise/Datacentre OS licenses with regards to virtualisation.

[leco]

snip - which are both very cheap. The licenses work the same way as Enterprise/Datacentre OS licenses with regards to virtualisation.

 

"cheap" in terms of what? The plan is to have two physical servers each running 3 virtual machines, all of which will be W2K10 R2. So how many licences do I need?

[Soulfish]

"cheap" in terms of what? The plan is to have two physical servers each running 3 virtual machines, all of which will be W2K10 R2. So how many licences do I need?

 

If you're just running 6 VM's and only using DPM it'll probably cheaper to purchase 6 x Operating System Environment Management License's (OSE ML's). However if you're looking at using the other system centre products then the Enterprise suite may be of use to you since it licenses you to use all the other products as well.

[leco]

Will wade through all the bumphf then, thanks

[AngryTechnician]

OK, this is roughly what I paid last year:

 

Server component (the software you actually run on your backup server):

SC Data Protectn Mngr All Lng Lic/SA Pack - £26

 

Server OSE licences (one for each server you're backing up):

System Center DPM Server MLStd PerOSE - £6.50

 

If you want an Enterprise licence (required for backing up Hyper-V hosts or Exchnage, amongst other things):

System Center DPM Server MLEnt PerOSE - £18

 

As you can see, they practically give it away on Schools Agreement. The real cost is in the server and the backup media. DPM wants a dedicated OS install all to itself, so if you're planning on disk-to-disk (and not tape), I'd strongly recommend making it a virtual server. I then connected to the SAN I back up to via iSCSI.

[Soulfish]

Server OSE licences (one for each server you're backing up):

System Center DPM Server MLStd PerOSE - £6.50

 

If you want an Enterprise licence (required for backing up Hyper-V hosts or Exchnage, amongst other things):

System Center DPM Server MLEnt PerOSE - £18

 

As you can see, they practically give it away on Schools Agreement. The real cost is in the server and the backup media. DPM wants a dedicated OS install all to itself, so if you're planning on disk-to-disk (and not tape), I'd strongly recommend making it a virtual server. I then connected to the SAN I back up to via iSCSI.

 

If you're running the Enterprise ML OSE licenses then you may want to look at the Enterprise/Datacentre Management suites which are around £35/server or £23/processor and license you for all of the system centre enterprise ML licenses

[leco]

Thanks for this, gives me some idea. I would be doing disk-to-disk (to a NAS) and then possibly to either external/portable HDD or to tape, not decided yet. I'm thinking HDD but it's the Bursar that will choose as the critical off-site would be Sims.

 

Do either of you know if there's an overview or white paper about System Center? I've looked on TechNet but they all seem to be support type docs for doing things, I'd like to read up about all the modules if possible.

[zag]

I'm looking at DPM as well to remove backupexec since we run a total MS environment.

 

Hope it lives up to the hype, so would be interested in any reviews.

[Cmd.exe]

I'm looking at DPM as well to remove backupexec since we run a total MS environment.

 

Hope it lives up to the hype, so would be interested in any reviews.

 

I second that, looks like the business, but would be good to know if anyone is using it in anger...

[Arthur]

DPM 2010 looks even better. It was RTM'ed yesterday.

 

http://blogs.technet.com/jbuff/archive/2010/04/19/today-is-rtm-day-for-dpm-and-sce.aspx

[zag]

Not Available on my Licensing download yet.

[pritchardavid]

Is it yet? Looking to get this, I just upgraded our backup server to 2008r2 and forgot that backup exec 12.5 (Think thats the version were licesed for) don't work on 2008r2

 

So this should be better than backup exec, never have liked symantec programs

[ZeroHour]

NOTE: MS DPM 2007 does not support 2008 R2 HyperV shared cluster storage or Exchange 2010

 

DPM 2010 is RTM but only currently avalible as a 6 month trial copy. MS are saying it will be out on VL this summer and those wanting to use 2010 now can do so with the trial as they just perform an upgrade to the non trial copy once its released.

[zag]

System Center Data Protection Manager Server ML Ent 2010

 

Is up for download Going to have a play later.

[ZeroHour]

Just to let you all know, I did a 2007->2010 (RTM Retail) upgrade and it was simple as pie, well done MS.

[AngryTechnician]

ZH: Quick question, did your protected servers need a reboot after upgrading the DPM agent?

[ZeroHour]

ZH: Quick question, did your protected servers need a reboot after upgrading the DPM agent?

 

2003 no, and the agent itself on any os does not need a reboot but 2008+ needs a hotfix before the agent can install and that hotfix does require a reboot. The hotfix is in the redistro dir in the install area under a KB9XXXX folder.

[zag]

I blogged about it here

 

http://www.edugeek.net/blogs/zag/330-microsoft-data-protection-manager-2010-first-impressions.html

[Alis_Klar]

Trying to do backup on the cheap. Got a decent quote for this software so looking seriously at it.

Hardware Requirements "The storage pool does not support Universal Serial Bus (USB)/1394 disks."

It there any way to get around this? Is there away of archiving off to an external drive for offsite storage?

 

Does it do any de-duplication or optimisation of how it stores multiple snapshots? It it like VSS in that it only stores the differences between multiple version of the same file?

[AngryTechnician]

DPM uses Single Instance Storage for dedup.

 

There's no way around the USB restrictions as the storage pool has to be permanently attached. My advice is to consider whether you have to actually store offsite. In my case my storage pool is all on a cheap iSCSI box in a building on the opposite side of the site. The building is connected to the school network, but is a good 50 feet from the next nearest building. In terms of disaster recovery, that's offsite enough for me - to simultaneously lose both the server room and the building the storage is in would require some kind of enormously catastrophic event that I frankly don't want to imagine.

[Alis_Klar]

Do you have any performance issues with iSCSI? Do you use openfiler or similar?

[AngryTechnician]

The device I'm using is a ReadyNAS 2100 over a 1Gb connection. I've had absolutely no performance issues with it at all.