How does data protection work?
Applies To: System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager, System Center 2012 SP1 - Data Protection Manager, System Center Data Protection Manager 2010
System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager (DPM) helps you manage the process of protecting and recovering data on the application servers, file servers, and workstations in your network. This topic describes the high-level steps you need to perform to successfully protect and recover data in the DPM environment.
Protecting data
The DPM protection process involves creating and maintaining a full replica of the protected data and regularly creating recovery points of the synchronized replica. The replica serves as a full backup of the protected data. The recovery points allow you to recover previous versions of the protected data. The following illustration shows the protection process.
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Retention range is always capped at 64 days whether DPM is protecting a file server, a workstation, or an application server. The maximum number of recovery points for each data source type are provided in the following table.
| Type of data source | Maximum number of disk-based recovery points |
|---|---|
Files |
64 spread over a maximum of 448 days. |
Exchange Server |
Maximum of 96 per day. Express full backups spread over a maximum of 448 days. |
SQL Server |
Maximum of 96 per day. 512 Express full backups spread over a maximum of 448 days. |
Windows SharePoint Services |
512 spread over a maximum of 448 days. |
Virtual Server |
512 spread over a maximum of 448 days. |
Hyper-V |
512 spread over a maximum of 448 days. |
Recovering data
The DPM recovery process involves choosing a previous version of the data source from the stored recovery points on the DPM server, and then restoring a copy of the selected data to its point of origin or to an alternate location.
See Also
Concepts
What Is a protection group?
What Is a Recovery Point?
Understand replicas
Synchronization
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