Manage the protection agent

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 SP1 - Data Protection Manager, System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

You can manage and maintain protection agents as follows:

• Configure network throttling

• Verify or refresh protection agent status

• Enable and disable the agent

• Uninstall the protection agent

• Roll back the protection agent

Network bandwidth usage throttling limits the amount of network bandwidth that System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager (DPM) can use on the protected computer to create and synchronize replicas. Throttling helps ensure that network bandwidth is available to applications on the protected computer other than DPM.

1. Enable the QoS Packet Scheduler on the DPM server and protected computer. You enable QoS in the Network Connections dialog, for the network connection between the protected computer and the DPM server.

2. In the Agent tab of the Management area in the DPM Administrator Console select the computer for which you want to configure network bandwidth usage throttling.

3. In the Actions pane, click Throttle computer and in Throttle, select Enable network bandwidth usage throttling.

4. Select Throttle Settings and Work Schedule for the computer. You can configure network bandwidth usage throttling separately for working hours and nonworking hours, and you can define the working hours for the protected computer.

Agent status is automatically updated every 30 minutes, or when you click the Agents tab. You can manually update status and information by clicking Refresh on the tool ribbon. Note that

• The Agent workspace lists the agent licenses purchased, agents in use, and agent status for each computer.

• For client computers that aren’t continuously connected to the network, DPM doesn’t automatically refresh the agents every 30 minutes. Their status will appear as Unknown until you manually refresh it.

You can check whether updates for the agent have been installed in Change or Remove Programs in the Control Panel.

You might want to disable a protection agent when doing the following:

• Performing maintenance tasks on the server

• Debugging a problem that you want to eliminate the System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager (DPM) agent as a potential cause

Enable and disable the agent as follows:

1. In the Management area, click Agents in the navigation pane, select the computer with the protection agent that you want to enable or disable. Hold down the SHIFT key to select multiple computers.

2. On the tool ribbon enable or disable the agent. When you disable a protection agent, DPM displays a message that all protection and recovery jobs for the protected computer will fail until the agent is re-enabled.

The primary reason to uninstall a protection agent is to stop protecting data on a computer. We recommend you uninstall a protection agent from the DPM console,but you can uninstall it locally on the protected computer, but you might then get irrelevant “Unable to connect” alerts. In addition, uninstalling from the DPM console automatically removes the computer from the Agents view.

Uninstall a protection agent with the DPM console as follows:

1. Remove all protection group members associated with the protected computer—To do this, in the Protection view, , select Computer and remove all protected data sources associated with the computer.

2. Uninstall the protection agent from the protected computer—To do this, in the Agents workspace, select the computer and on the tool ribbon, click Uninstall.

3. In the Uninstall Agents dialog box, click Uninstall Agents > Next. Type in credentials for a Local Administrator account on all the computers you’ve selected. Choose whether you want to automatically restart the computer or whether you want to manually restart the computer after the protection agent has been uninstalled.

   A status box indicates success. You can’t close this box until uninstallation succeeds or fails.

4. Restart the computer. After the uninstall the DPM server will no longer monitor the computer, or use disk space to store its replicas and recovery points.

If you need to uninstall a protection agent locally, remove it using Change or Remove Programs in the Control Panel. You’ll need to restart the computer after the uninstall.

Note that when you locally uninstall a protection agent from a computer, DPM Administrator Console continues to list the computer on the Agents workspace, with a status of Error.

To uninstall a protection agent from the command prompt type these commands:

• 32-Bit: Type Msiexec /x {07CCDE6A-1D92-2C9C-D091-9E682643ABCC}. For a silent uninstall, type: Msiexec /x {07CCDE6A-1D92-2C9C-D091-9E682643ABCC} /qn /REBOOT=ReallySupress

• 64-bit: Type Msiexec /x {72BF00D8-53E0-1539-F523-4347082BCC11}. For a silent uninstall, type: Msiexec /x {72BF00D8-53E0-1539-F523-4347082BCC11} /qn /REBOOT=ReallySupress

If you experience problems after updating a protection agent, you can roll back to a previous version as follows:

1. Uninstall the updated protection agent from the protected computer. Remember to uninstall all protection group members associated with the computer first.

2. Reinstall the previous protection agent on the protected computer by using the DPM Administrator Console.