Data Protection Manager (DPM) is a part of the Microsoft System Center product suite. The Microsoft System Center products are recognized as tools that IT professionals use to manage their Microsoft domain environments. DPM fits right into this category of products. DPM is Microsoft's first strategy in the back up and recovery space. DPM is on its third version starting with DPM 2006 released in 2005, then DPM 2007 and now DPM 2010. Data Protection Manager is designed to provide IT professionals with a better, more stable way to manage data back up and recovery and minimize data loss.

DPM is a centralized back up solution for Microsoft domain environments. DPM does not back up non-Microsoft operating systems natively. Backing up non-Microsoft systems can be done through third party solutions that we will cover later in Chapter 9 (this includes server and client operating systems). DPM utilizes Microsoft Shadow Copy technology to perform continuous back ups. It performs these continuous back ups at the block-level to ensure data integrity. DPM creates continuous snapshots of data from protected clients. DPM performs a synchronization of only changed data from protected clients keeping the space requirements low on the drives you are backing up to. For example, if you have 200 GB of data that you are protecting on the protected server, DPM will only synchronize the changed data and this might be a couple hundred MB of data. Sending a couple hundred MB of data over a network versus 200 GB of data helps keep bandwidth usage low allowing DPM to perform back ups more frequently.

DPM can perform these synchronizations as often as every 15 minutes, depending on workload being protected, providing constant protection.

The following is a diagram of what DPM can protect and how it can provide protection in your environment:

The DPM Architecture has many parts to it but is easy to understand. We will go through the various pieces. DPM's index and configuration information is stored in a SQL database. This DPM database can be either local or remote on a new or existing instance of SQL. A SQL 2008 instance is required for the DPM database. DPM 2010 runs on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit architecture. It is recommended by Microsoft that DPM needs to be installed on a server dedicated for DPM only. DPM has several combinations in which it can back up your data which help determine the topologies in which DPM can be set up. A number of things need to be considered such as how long you need to retain data, how quickly you need to recover data and how much data you have to back up.

DPM is capable of Disk-to-disk (D2D), Disk-to-tape (D2T), Disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T), and Disk-to-disk-to-cloud (D2D2C) protection. Back up to disk offers fast restores while back up to disk then to tape offers a way to archive date for long retention. You can also back up straight to tape skipping back up to disk all together and back up to the cloud. Backing up to the cloud offers a way to get critical data offsite without the need to send tapes offsite. DPM was designed to back up data on any disk that is presented to the operating system on the DPM server including internal hard drives, Direct Attached Storage (DAS), tape solutions, Storage Area Network (SAN), iSCSI NAS, and to the cloud.

For every operation that DPM performs, there is a PowerShell code that runs underneath. This is good news because that means that anything DPM does from the GUI can be scripted to help automate certain tasks. In fact, some tasks can only be performed in PowerShell. This will be covered in detail in Chapter 10 It is recommended that you have PowerShell knowledge or start learning it as soon as you can. Microsoft is now creating a good amount of its new applications in PowerShell, some of these being products in the System Center suite.

As with every product, DPM does have some disadvantages. Along with all the pros of DPM we need to understand what the cons are as this will help you determine if DPM will fit your needs or not. The last thing you want is to invest in DPM only to find out it won't do what you need it to do.

The cons of DPM are as follows:

DPM is an intuitive back up tool built with System Administrators, Messaging Administrators, Database Administrators, SharePoint Administrators, Virtualization Administrators, and developers in mind. Microsoft's goal was to provide anyone in these roles with the power to back up without the complex configurations or the need for extensive training in back up and storage.

DPM is not the be all and end all back up solution if you have non-Microsoft servers and clients in your environment, nor is it perfect. It is however, a top industry leading data protection solution compared to other data protection solutions out there on the market. DPM is a back up/restore/disaster recovery solution that you can depend on for backing up and recovering your data. DPM integrates well with the products it protects such as Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server, and other Microsoft applications. Last but not least, DPM provides great value for the price as you will see next.

DPM 2010 pricing can be confusing on the Microsoft site. In the following chart the DPM licensing and pricing has been broken down in a way that is easier to understand. DPM 2010 pricing is as follows:

All of the above licenses are considered to be Management Licenses (MLs). MLs are legal rights and have no digital footprint. This means MLs are not installed on the managed device (OSE) or placed in the registry. It is up to the customer to make sure they are in compliance with licensing. DPM 2010 requires ML licenses for each managed device (OSE). OSE stands for Operating System Environment. An OSE covers all OSs running in any environment (physical or virtual). A managed device would be more fitting. A managed device is any server or client that is protected by DPM. However an ML is not required for any managed device that is functioning solely as a network infrastructure device. An example of this would be an ISA server. The ISA server performs network functions such as being a firewall or a load balancing device.

DPM has a robust set of features and capabilities. The following are some of the most valuable ones:

As you will probably know there are many products out there in the data protection market. Here are a few, broken down by paid and free:

Most of the free products are for Linux platforms and offer limited and/or community support because they are open source. A few of them such as DirSync Pro, AMANDA, and BackupPC will back up MAC OS as well. All of the free products on the list will back up Windows based servers. None of the free products are nearly as good as DPM when comparing features and you will not get the same level of support that you will receive from Microsoft.

One of the most well-known and used product is Symantec's Backup Exec. Some of the differences between DPM and Backup Exec are that DPM is a lot more intuitive and easy to set up and DPM is integrated much better when backing up Microsoft applications servers. The following is a list comparing DPM to other back up solutions on the market. We will only cover three of the paid back up products:

As you can see from the preceding table, there are many features that are common across all of these back up products and there are some major differences as well. Acronis is easy to implement in firewall protected environments. Acronis also lets you take complete images of your servers as none of the other above products do. One of the major differences is cost and this is where DPM takes the prize. All of the mentioned solutions require you to purchase extra licensing to back up workstations. Most of the solutions require you to buy additional licensing to back up specific applications such as SQL, SharePoint, and Exchange. However DPM includes this in its enterprise license and it still costs less than the other back up products.

Something you will notice when you shop for a back up product is that most of the pricing options on the products' websites are complex. This can make it difficult when trying to figure out the pricing of what you need for your environment. Choosing a DPM solution for your workload is relatively simpler. For example, you only pay one price and you are able to back up applications in your network.

The majority of the back up products mentioned earlier have a good amount of training resources and information around to help you get up to speed with them. The only one I found difficult to find training and documentation on was CommVault.

One of the drawbacks of DPM is that it is limited to only backing up Microsoft servers natively. You can protect non-Microsoft computers if it runs as a virtual machine in Hyper-V or with a third party product. All of the other products can back up Linux servers natively without third party add-ons. Many environments contain VMware and not being able to back this up with DPM is a problem. Microsoft has included the capability to manage and monitor non-Microsoft products such as VMware with System Center Operations Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. You would think Microsoft would have included the ability to protect VMware and Linux with DPM. This would be a nice feature to have within DPM. Maybe Microsoft will add protection to non-Microsoft servers that are common today in many environments in the next release of DPM: that way you won't need to purchase a third party product for it.

From this chapter, you should now have a good understanding of what Data Protection Manager is, its architecture, features, licensing, new features for 2010, its pros, cons, and what makes it different from other data protection products.

In the next chapter we will touch on preparing for your back up strategy and DPM 2010 deployment.