Setting Up Disaster Recovery

Updated: August 30, 2010

Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2010

System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 enables you to protect your data sources on a secondary DPM server, preferably at a remote location, as a backup to your primary DPM server for disaster recovery. A disaster can take the following forms:

The primary DPM server and the protected computers are lost.
Only the primary DPM server is lost.

In the first case, having a secondary DPM server in a remote location enables you to recover your protected computers quickly. In the second case, you can switch protection so that the secondary DPM server takes over as the primary DPM server for the protected computers until another computer can be set up as the primary DPM server.

Setting Up Protection on a Secondary DPM Server

From the secondary DPM server, in the Management task area, install a protection agent on the primary DPM server. For step-by-step instructions for installing a protection agent, see Installing and Configuring Protection Agents in the DPM 2010 Deployment Guide (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=181919).
On the secondary DPM server, in the Protection task area, use the Create New Protection Group Wizard to add the primary DPM server to a protection group. For step-by-step instructions for creating a new protection group, see Creating Protection Groups in the DPM 2010 Deployment Guide (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=199514).

In the Create New Protection Group Wizard, expand the primary DPM server, expand the members under the primary DPM server, and then select which members you want to protect, for example, the DPM database (DPMDB) and computers that are protected on the primary DPM server. When you expand the protected computers, you see System Protection if either bare metal recovery (BMR) or System State is enabled for them.

Note
On the secondary DPM server, the Create New Protection Group Wizard does not differentiate between BMR and System State protection. If either is protected, it appears as System Protection.

Important
We strongly recommend that you protect the DPMDB on the secondary DPM server.

Important
If your primary DPM server is protecting a SharePoint farm, you must provide sufficient time for the secondary DPM server to back up the primary DPM server before the next scheduled backup of the primary DPM server starts. By using the Modify Protection Group Wizard, you can specify when you want the primary DPM server backup to start.

Migrating Between BMR and System State Protection on the Primary DPM Server

If you change system protection from BMR to System State or vice versa for a computer that is protected by the primary DPM server, the disk allocation changes are not automatically applied to the secondary DPM server. You must manually check to see whether the changes are applied correctly.

Hi Tim,

I´m no sure about this, but I think that the answer is Yes. Communication between primary and secondary DPM servers is using DPM agent and than it´s not necessary DPM servers are in the trusted domain (you will need install agent manually in primary DPM server and attach this agent in secondary DPM server).

Rodrigo Muniz

Setting Up Protection on a Secondary DPM Server

Migrating Between BMR and System State Protection on the Primary DPM Server

See Also

Other Resources