Configuring Data Source Groups
Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2010
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) supports running parallel backups of data sources in the same protection group to optimize your network usage. To optimize performance of backing up SharePoint, you can configure the databases so that they can be backed up in parallel across disk spindles, physical disks, or servers. This configuration can be done by authoring the DataSourceGroups.xml file on the DPM server.
Configuring DataSourceGroups.xml
To configure the DatasourceGroupsSample.xml file, follow these steps:
Locate the DatasourceGroupsSample.xml file in the Config folder under the DPM installation folder.
Make a copy of the DatasourceGroupsSample.xml file and rename it.
After you perform the preceding steps, when a new protection group is created or an existing protection group is modified, DPM will load the DatasourceGroupsSample.xml file.
Note
Modifying an existing protection group leads to cancellation of all running jobs. To avoid this, you can create a dummy protection group that contains a single data source and modify it when you want to reload the XML file.
The DatasourceGroupsSample.xml file will contain a single group (for example, Group1) and all the data sources protected by the DPM server will be present in that group. If you do not want to control the backup of any particular data source, then that data source can be removed from the XML file. The following is an example of a DatasourceGroupsSample.xml file.
Note
Each group must have its own unique name.
<Group GroupName="Group1"> <Datasource DatasourceName=<Database> ProtectedServerName=<Protected Server> WriterId=<Writer ID /> </Group>
The following table describes the field names in the DatasourceGroupsSample.xml file.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
DataSourceName |
Name of the database. The name should be in the following format: SQLInstanceName\SQLDBName. |
ProtectedServerName |
Name of the server where the database resides. |
WriterID |
ID of the VSS writer that reports this database. This field is set by the system and does not have to be modified. |
When running parallel backups, DPM selects only one database from each group.
If you have to back up two databases from the same spindle or disk, ensure that both the databases are in the same group in the XML file. This helps to maximize the use of disk throughput and also ensures that DPM does not back up both the databases in parallel.
You can create an unlimited number of groups. However, DPM can run backups for only eight SharePoint databases from the same database instance in parallel. In SQL Server 2005, you can run only one backup at a time from a given instance of SQL Server.
Unloading DatasourceGroups.xml
To unload the datasourcegroups.xml file, perform the following steps:
Save a copy of datasourcegroups.xml using a different name.
Empty datasourcegroups.xml and save it.
Run the Modify Protection Wizard for any protection group to complete the unload process.