DPM 2010: Exchange 2010 DAG Support

For C2ict, the company I work for, we have implemented the DPM 2010 beta. To get familiar with all the new features of DPM 2010, but more importantly because DPM 2010 supports the Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group). C2ict joined the TAP for Exchange 2010 and therefore also requires a backup solution for Exchange 2010. During the TAP we used a special build of DPM2007 that was able to protected the Exchange 2010 database, unfortunately this build was not DAG aware.
A good reason to switch to the DPM 2010 beta.

In the picture below you see how to select the Exchange 2010 databases. When creating a new protection group, you will find the name of your DAG on the select Group members TAB. Here you select the database to protect.

At this point you should have copied the ESEUTIL and the supporting DLL from your Exchange server to the DPM server. Just as in DPM 2007, we can use the DPM server to run eseutil data integrity checks. For Exchange 2010 DAG it is recommenced to do this only for the log files. (Need to get more familiar with Exchange 2010 to figure out why)

When protecting multiple copies of the same database (within a DAG), you should make a Full backup of only one copy of the database and a copy backup of the other database. This because a Full backup of one copy of the database will also clean-up the logs for the other copies.

These are the Exchange 2010 specific steps for creating a protection group.

More info:
Exchange Server 2010 Backup and Restore SDK
Changes to Backup and Restore in Exchange 2010
Single Item Recovery in Exchange Server 2010