DPM 2010 and OCS front-end protection

Tom Pacyk wrote a post in 3 parts on protecting and recovering the OCS front-end server role with DPM 2010

Quote: “The goal of this series is to demonstrate how to recover your OCS Front-End’s RTC database in the event of a disaster where your database or disk hosting the RTC database has become corrupted. Or maybe you’ve recovered a server’s installation and configuration, but now need to recover the user information. I’m going to do this in 3 different parts: backing up, destroying, recovering.”

Your OCS Front-End and DPM 2010 Part 1- Backup
Your OCS Front-End and DPM 2010 Part 2- Destruction
Your OCS Front-End and DPM 2010 Part 3- Recovery

Link to Tom’s Blog: http://www.confusedamused.com/

SharePoint protection failed

DPM can be used to protected Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. DPM used the SharePoint VSS writer for this Protection. More details in the post SharePoint Protection with DPM

To provide the DPMRA agent with the necessary permissions to protect SharePoint, you need to run the ConfigureSharepoint.exe tool. This utility configures the WSS Writer service and any associated services with the correct credentials required to access the farm for backup and recovery purposes.

This works like a charm in most environments. However in some highly secured domains you can run in to issues. When a Group Policy overwrites the required permissions, the protection will fail.

In this case you will see errors like below.

Error on the DPM Server:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recovery point creation jobs for Shared Services Provider SSP_Database_server_name\Instance\database_name on SharePoint front-end_server_name  have been failing. The number of failed recovery point creation jobs = 4.
If the datasource protected is SharePoint, then click on the Error Details to view the list of databases for which recovery point creation failed.  (ID 3114)

An unexpected error occurred during job execution. (ID 104 Details: The server process could not be started because the configured identity is incorrect. Check the username and password (0x8000401A))
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Error in the application log of the WFE (SharePoint Front-end):

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    DCOM
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    10004
Date:        29-10-2009
Time:        10:05:04
User:        N/A
Computer:    <WFE server>
Description: DCOM got error "Logon failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer. " and was unable to logon <domain>\<configuration account> in order to run the server:
{E95EF0B1-D0E3-45D9-B699-8B37F068CF25}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This can be related to Log on as a batch job permission that should be assigned to the account you specified when running the ConfigureSharePoint.exe command.

This right is set by the ConfigureSharepoint.exe –EnableSharePointProtection command. Make sure this right is not overwiten by your security (Group) policies.

SharePoint Protection with DPM

I’m not the first one to blog about this. But I’m just very impressed with the great documentation available on the Microsoft weblog about protecting and recovering SharePoint (MOSS)

 

I Just had to share it with you:
DPM and SharePoint - Part 1 - A love/love relationship
DPM and SharePoint - Part 2 - How does DPM protect SharePoint data?
DPM and SharePoint - Part 3 - How does DPM restore SharePoint data?
DPM and SharePoint - Part 4 - Why do I get this error?

DPM 2010: Jason Buffington on Protecting Exchange 2010

Jason talks with Leslie Kitz (also in the System Center team) about how DPM 2010 adds to what Exchange 2010 does for data protection and availability.  After that a quick demo!
Check it out on Nexus SC: The System Center Team Blog

Thanks Marnix

Tape library inventory using Powershell

The command to start a fast or detailed inventory using Powershell is not to difficult, the trick is to get the correct name for the tape library.
In the example below we use an additional Powershell command to read the Library name in to a variable.  

First we need to list all tape libraries attached to the DPM server. When you have a Tape library attached, you might see the drive listed as well. Note the order the tape libraries are listed.
(replace dpm01 with the name of your DPM server)

PS > get-dpmlibrary -DPMServerName dpm01 Name                                     Drives                   Slots          I/E ports ----                                     ------                   -----               --------- Stand-alone Drive: I...                       1                    0                 0          #0 Library: Library1                             2                      23                1          #1

Now we read the library details in to the variable $DPMlib
(replace dpm01 with the name of your DPM server)

$dpmlib = get-dpmlibrary -DPMServerName dpm01

Using the information collected with the first command we now can start the inventory. The number added to the $DPMlib variable is the order number in which the library is listed, start counting with 0. In this example, the number 1.

Fast inventory:

PS > Start-DPMLibraryInventory -DpmLibrary $dpmlib[1] JobCategory                        Status                             HasCompleted -----------                             ------                                  ------------ FastInventory                      Scheduled                            False

Detailed inventory:

PS > Start-DPMLibraryInventory -DetailedInventory -DpmLibrary $dpmlib[1] JobCategory                        Status                                  HasCompleted -----------                             ------                                  ------------ DetailedInventory                Scheduled                               False

When you use it in a script it will look like this

$dpmlib = get-dpmlibrary -DPMServerName dpm01 Start-DPMLibraryInventory -DpmLibrary $dpmlib[1]

Migrate protection data

There are some cases you might need to migrate your protection data to a new disk. DPM Sp1is shipped with a Powershell script that allows you to migrate your protection data to new storage.
For this you need to follow these steps:

First get a list of disks attached to your DPM server; pay attention to the order the disks are listed 

Start the DPM Management Shell

PS> get-dpmdisk –dpmservername DPM01 Name          Status            NtDiskId Total Capaci Unallocated  Type                                                    ty        Space ----          ------            -------- ------------ ------------ ---- COMPAQ MSA... Healthy               3       732 GB       582 GB Basic          #0 COMPAQ MSA... Healthy               4       732 GB       582 GB Basic          #1 VMware Vir... Healthy               1        50 GB        28 GB Basic               #2 VMware Vir... Healthy                2         5 GB         0 GB Basic                 #3

Read the disk order in to a variable ($disk)

PS > $disk = Get-DPMDisk -DPMServername dpm01

Now you can use the script MigrateDatasourceDataFromDPM.ps1. First find the disk number of the source disk, these numbers are not displayed when you use the get-dpmdisk command. Do not get fooled by the NTdiskID, you do not need those. You just need to count the disks listed starting with 0 (see red numbers in example). Now find the number for the destination disk using the same trick.

In the example below we like to migrate the data from disk 2 to disk 1

PS > ./MigrateDatasourceDataFromDPM.ps1 -DPMServerName dpm01 -Source $disk[2] -Destination $disk[1]

More options and examples can be found on Technet

DPM 2010: Some Friday afternoon screen shots

Just preformed the first DPM 2010 installation in a small test environment. First of all I need to say I’m very pleased with the documentation that is shipped the beta. The installation documents not only describes the basic installation of DPM 2010 on a clean system, but also various upgrade scenarios from DPM 2007. Beside the setup guide, there is also documentation for protecting Hyper-v, SharePoint item-Level recovery, SQL Server End User Recovery, client computer protection and many more.

The Operation System requirements for the DPM server have changed. Only the x64 versions of Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 are supported. Windows 2003 is no longer supported.
SQL 2008 is the supported database, you can either use a remote SQL database or use the local instance delivered with the DPM installation

New is the option to Install DPM on a domain controller. This requires some additional configuration (mostly creating security groups and users).

I used Windows 2008 R2 (x64) for this installation. Using the R2 version of Windows 2008 makes the installation easier because Powershell 2.0 (one of the prerequisites) is already included in the Operation system. The installation is straight forward, one additional reboot is required when Windows Single Instance store (SiS) is not installed.

The DPM Administrator console starts when the installation is completed. A first look at the console shows a lot of similarity with the previous version, no big interface changes like in each new release of Microsoft office.

 

But during a better look you will definitely shows find the changes. First of all the agent installation now includes an option to attach manual installed agents (behind firewall). You needed Powershell for this in the previous version.

When creating a new protection group or adding a member to an excising protection group you will notice two changes. First is the auto grow option for the protection volume. With this option the replica and recovery volume automatically grow when more space is required for protection. Second is the consistency check option. The GUI now includes an option to automatically start a consistency check when a replica is inconsistent. Both options will reduce the number of failed recovery point creations.

 

Last for this Friday afternoon is the Recover point status report. This is a direct link (on the protection tab) to a report that shows the recovery point status of the selected data sources.

There is a lot more to tell … To be continued

DPM 2010 Poll: The results

Together with the release of DPM 2010 beta also the the Poll “What should DPM v3 include ?” ended.  More coincidence than planning, anyhow the results are here!
First I like to thank everyone how took the time to vote, 121 votes were counted, which is more then I expected.

The results are show below, you will count more then 121 votes because one voter could select multiple options.

 

Exchange single mail restore: DPM2007 restores the full mailbox store only Improved Tape backup support: Allow to configure in more detail when backups run. Support for None Microsoft OS/applications: In the 2007 release only applications that have a VSS writer available are supported. Protect none (trusted) domain servers: A machine in a none trusted domain or in a workgroup cannot be directly protected by DMP2007 Management console on another computer: The graphical interface can only be installed on the DPM2007 server itself. Better SAN integration: Does the SAN integration need improvement Improved documentation: Is the documentation sufficient or should v3 include more/better documentation USB/Firewire storage support: There is no native support for backups to USB/Firewire disk. More standard reports: Are the reports of the current DPM version sufficient or should v3 include more reports

The big ‘winner’ in this poll is the Exchange single mail box restore. I can quite understand why this point score so ‘good’. According to my memory the initial marketing state something like “Single mail item restore without brick level backup” Which is technically correct, but does involve restore the full mailbox database and after that using Powershell to get the correct mail items. 
Another imported ‘winner’ is Improve tape support. This is also something I hear in the field, people struggle with configuring tape backup the way it reflex their business needs.

In the next weeks we will find out which of these suggestions are included in DPM 2010

Again thank you for taking the time to vote! Now it time to test the new DPM 2010 beta!!