• Article

Configure client computer protection

 

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 SP1 - Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 - Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

DPM can back up client computer file data.

Before you start

Read through the Prerequisites for client computer protection before you set up protection.

Set up protection

  1. Deploy DPM—Verify that DPM is installed and deployed correctly. If you haven’t see:

  2. Set up storage—Check that you have storage set up. Read more about your options in:

  3. Set up the DPM protection agent—The agent needs to be installed on client computers you want to protect. Read Plan for protection agent deployment, and then Set up the protection agent.

  4. Set up a protection group—Set up a protection group that includes the client computers you want to protect.

    Read more about protection groups in:

    Note the following:

    • On the Select Group Members page of the Create New Protection Group wizard. Click Add Multiple Computers to add the client computers you want to protect. You must enter each computer in the file on a new line. We recommend that you provide the FQDN target computers. For example, enter multiple computers in a .txt file as follows:

      • Comp1.abc.domain.com

      • Comp2.abc.domain.com

      • Comp3.abc.domain.com

      If DPM can’t find any of the computers that you specified in the .txt file or that you entered in the Text file location box, the failed set of computers is placed in a log file. Click the Failed to add machines link at the bottom of the page to open the log file.

    • On the Specify Inclusions and Exclusions page, specify the folders to include or exclude for protection on the selected computers. To select from a list of well-known folders, such as Documents, click the drop-down list. Note that:

      • When you exclude a folder, and then specify a separate inclusion rule for a subfolder, DPM doesn’t back up the subfolder. The exclusion rule overrides the inclusion rule.

      • When you include a folder, and then specify a separate exclude rule for a subfolder, DPM backs up the entire folder, except for the excluded subfolder.

      • When you include a well-known folder such as Documents, DPM locates the Documents folder for all users on the computer, and then applies the rule. For example, if the user profile for computer Comp1 contains the Documents folder for both User1 and User2, DPM will back up both folders.

    • In the Folder column you type the folder names using variables such as programfiles, or you can use the exact folder name. Select Include or Exclude for each entry in the Rule column.

    • You can select Allow users to specify protection members to give your end users the choice to add more folders on the computer that they want to back up. However, the files and folders you have explicitly excluded as an administrator cannot be selected by the end user.

    • Under File type exclusions you can specify the file types to exclude using their file extensions.

  5. On the Allocate Storage page we recommend that you co-located multiple client data sources to one replica volume if you have a large number of client computers. You won’t be able to protect 1000 or more client computers with one DPM server without co-locating your data. We recommend that you do not co-locate if you have less than ten client computers in a protection group. Select Automatically grow the volumes to automatically increase size when more disk space is required for protecting data on the client computers.

  6. After you create the protection group initial replication of the data occurs. Backup then takes place in line with the protection group settings.

  7. To add new client computers to an existing protection group you right-click the group name and select Add client computers.

Set up monitoring

After the protection group’s been created the initial replication occurs and DPM starts backing up and synchronizing the Exchange data. DPM monitors the initial synchronization and subsequent backups. You can monitor the Exchange data in a couple of ways:

  • Using default DPM monitoring can set up notifications for proactive monitoring. by publishing alerts and configuring notifications. You can send notifications by e-mail for critical, warning, or informational alerts, and for the status of instantiated recoveries.

  • If you use Operations Manager you can centrally publish alerts.

Set up monitoring notifications

  1. In the DPM Administrator Console, click Monitoring > Action > Options.

  2. Click SMTP Server, type the server name, port, and email address from which notifications will be sent. The address must be valid.

  3. In Authenticated SMTP server , type a user name and password.The user name and password must be the domain account name of the person whose “From” address is described in the previous step; otherwise, notification delivery fails.

  4. To test the SMTP server settings, click Send Test E-mail, type the e-mail address where you want DPM to send the test message, and then click OK. Click Options > Notifications and select the types of alerts about which recipients want to be notified. In Recipients type the e-mail address for each recipient to whom you want DPM to send copies of the notifications.

  5. To test the SMTP server settings, click Send Test Notification > OK.

Publish alerts for Operations Manager

  1. In the DPM Administrator Console, click Monitoring > Action > Options.

  2. In Options click Alert Publishing > Publish Active Alerts.

  3. After you enable Alert Publishing all existing DPM alerts that might require a user action are published to the DPM Alerts event log. The Operations Manager agent that is installed on the DPM server then publishes these alerts to the Operations Manager and continues to update the console as new alerts are generated.