Microsoft released DPM 2010 at MMS in Las Vegas this post will be a short introduction on how to get started with a test lab for DPM.

This will be a start in a series with short demos of DPM and its features first one is just to get started and can be skipped if you have used DPM before

First off is to get hands on the trial

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=cba30567-6ef0-4450-93f8-e433897cb093 

Currently download bits are seperated into 4 files so they need to be downloaded , please note that DPM server is required to run on Server 2008 x64 bit or R2 x64 bit , Itanium is not supported for DPM server

Running the setup program will assemble the 4 parts to a install directory

before installing its always a good idea to look at system requirement , personally i would if possible always deploy on R2 and as we can see from the notes  , no hotfixes is needed on the OS level before install DPM if its running on R2

time to accept the license , note that its a trial aggrement so production use is not permitted pr default

a very nice feature of the DPM installer is that it will handle installing all requirement that are needed (exept for OS level hotfixes) hopefully Microsoft will keep this trend in future products.

time to start the product installation

DPM uses SIS and will install it when you proceed and it checks for memory

Memory requirement is 4GB but since memory is so cheap these days i wouldnt go below 8gb (thats also recomended size) to save disk i/o for swapping to much , espically if the local SQL is used

Time to reboot and continue installation

Start setup manually after logon to continue where we left off.

Enter user information

I prefeer to move install off the system drive

and the same goes for the database , its possible to use a remote sql server  , i prefeer to use a local sql server to avoid having any requiremet exept for AD and it makes it easier for trouble shooting.

Create a password for the local users  , no managed service accounts yet

Patching for this test lab will be handled though Windows Update

The installer will do its magic for you.

and verify that the install completes without erors.

After install make sure there are some available disks to make the backup to , Data Protection Manager require dymanic disks will convert basic diske when they are selected

Data Protection Manager protects data with moving it to disk and then optionally can copy the data to tape or 3rd parts providers for long time storage.

select the disks you want to use for protection

If its a basic disk DPM will convert the disk to dymanic

and we have a storage pool available for protection

its time to protect the first server , go to management agents and install agent

DPM have several ways to either install agents or attach agents installed allready , for testing purpose we push the agent to a remote server with Install Agents , the DPM server needs to be able to access the remote server so there need to be access though the target firewall

If the server is visible you can select and install on it , or type in the computer inthe computer name field

use a account that have admin access on the remote machine , DPM runs as localsystem so this is only needed for installing the agent

DPM can reboot the remote host after agent install but its not needed for 2008/R2

And the agent installer will do its magic

and verify that the agent is installed with success.

On the remote host the Windows Backup feature needs to be installed to fully protect the host

the server will show up in the agents view as unprotected when we have no protections jobs assigned

Goto protection and create protection group

Time to start the wizard to protect hosts

We will just protect the system drive to start with

And we create a Protection Group for system drives with disk allocation (no tape drive yet)

For testing we do a changed backup every 15 minutes and a full recovery point 3 times a day , this will ensure that we can loose more than 15 minutes of data for a system failure

DPM will look at disk usuage and try to calculate whats needed on the DPM server , DPM can grow the volume so if there are free space on the DPM server it will allocate as needed

First backup can be scheduled default is replicate after the job have created , if protection is needed over slow or high cost WAN links first backup can be created on the remote host and later imported on the DPM server , the bandwith of the UPS delivery is very high just latency isnt that impressive

If a repica for some reason becomes inconsistent DPM can autocorrect the replica instead of the administrator having to do it manually every day.

Summary before protection group is being created

DPM will prepare the volumes for backup

and the initial replication is running.

and our protection is up and running

and we can restore the files we want from the protection drive

and we can see what are being sheduled.

This was the first intro to setup a DPM lab for testing before we see the full license.