How DPM Uses Tape

Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

To use tape-based protection in DPM, you must attach a tape library or stand-alone tape drive to the DPM server. A tape library is a data-storage system that consists of one or more tape drives, a number of slots to hold tape cartridges and a transport system for moving tapes. A stand-alone tape drive is a single-drive, non-automated tape drive that holds a single tape.

You can use tape for both short-term and long-term protection of file and application data.

DPM protects data on tape through a combination of full and incremental backups from either the protected computer (for short-term protection on tape or for long-term protection on tape when DPM does not protect the data on disk) or the DPM replica (for long-term protection on tape when short-term protection is on disk).

Note

When an application does not support incremental backups, DPM will perform full backups only.

DPM can either compress or encrypt data on tapes. Compressing encrypted data can increase the data file size instead of decreasing it.

See Also

Tasks

How to Compress Data in a Protection Group
How to Encrypt Data in a Protection Group

Concepts

Managing Tapes
New Protection Group Wizard