Client Computer Operating System Requirements

Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

Before protecting your client computers, you must ensure that the following prerequisites are installed on the client computer:

Client Computer Operating System Requirements

Each DPM server can protect up to 3000 client computers that are running either the 32-bit or 64-bit versions of the following operating systems:

  • Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later

    Note

    Recovery from previous versions of files and folders is not supported on computers running Windows XP.

  • Windows Vista or Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1)

  • Windows 7 Client

Network Requirements

Following are the network requirements for DPM 2010 when working with the following types of client computer connections:

Protection across domains

The client computers that you want to protect must have a two-way trust relationship with the domain in which the DPM server is located.

Client computers behind a firewall

If Windows Firewall is configured on the client computer, the DPM protection agent installation will automatically configure the necessary firewall exceptions. If you need to reset the firewall, you can reconfigure it by running SetDpmServer.exe. If you are using a firewall other than Windows Firewall, ensure that the necessary ports for DPM are open. For more information, in the DPM 2010 Deployment Guide, see Configuring Windows Firewall on the DPM Server (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=179380).

Client computers over a VPN connection

DPM can perform backups of client computers that are using a virtual private network (VPN) connection.

Note

For backups of client computers that are intermittently connected to the network, and that are expected to connect over a VPN, we recommend that your Internet connection speed be a minimum of 1 Megabit per second (Mbps).

DPM supports the following VPN protocols:

  • Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP)

  • Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP)

  • Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP)

Important

To perform backups over a VPN, you must enable Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP). For more information, see How to enable ICMP traffic from protected SecureNet clients to external hosts in ISA Server 2006 and ISA Server 2004 (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=186982).

Client computers that are always connected to the network

DPM 2010 can perform backups of client computers that are either physically or wirelessly connected to the local area network (LAN). For client computers that are continuously connected to the network, ensure that sufficient bandwidth is available for DPM. We recommend a minimum network bandwidth of 256 Kilobits per second (Kbps) for computers that are continuously connected to the network.