Recovery Process
Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2007
The method of data protection, disk-based or tape-based, makes no difference to the recovery task. You select the recovery point of data that you want to recover, and DPM recovers the data to the protected computer.
DPM can store a maximum of 64 recovery points for each file member of a protection group. For application data sources, DPM can store up to 448 express full backups and up to 96 incremental backups for each express full backup. When storage area limits have been reached and the retention range for the existing recovery points is not met yet, protection jobs will fail.
Note
To support end-user recovery, the recovery points for files are limited to 64 by Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).
As explained in The File Data Synchronization Process and The Application Data Synchronization Process, the process for creating recovery points differs between file data and application data. DPM creates recovery points for file data by taking a shadow copy of the replica on a schedule that you configure. For application data, each synchronization and express full backup creates a recovery point.
The following illustration shows how each protection group member is associated with its own replica volume and recovery point volume.
Protection Group Members, Replicas, and Recovery Points
.gif "Protected data and storage volumes")
Administrators recover data from available recovery points by using the Recovery Wizard in DPM Administrator Console. When you select a data source and point in time from which to recover, DPM notifies you if the data is on tape, whether the tape is online or offline, and which tapes are needed to complete the recovery.
Users can recover previous versions of protected files. Because recovery points retain the folder and file structure of protected data sources, users browse through familiar volumes, folders, and shares to recover the data they want. End-user recovery is not available for application data such as an Exchange mailbox. Also, the versions of file data that are available for end-user recovery are those stored on disk in the DPM storage pool; file data that has been archived to tape can be recovered only by an administrator.
End users recover protected files by using a client computer that is running the shadow copy client software. Users can recover previous versions through shares on file servers, through Distributed File System (DFS) Namespaces, or by using a command on the Tools menu for Microsoft Office applications.
See Also
Concepts
The Application Data Synchronization Process
The File Data Synchronization Process