Planning the Storage Pool
Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2010
The storage pool is a set of disks on which the DPM server stores the replicas and recovery points for the protected data. Planning the storage pool involves calculating capacity requirements and planning the configuration of the disks.
You can also substitute custom volumes that you define in Disk Management for volumes in the storage pool.
DPM can use any of the following for the storage pool:
Direct attached storage (DAS)
Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN)
iSCSI storage device or SAN
The storage pool supports most disk types, including Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE), Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA), and SCSI, and it supports both the master boot record (MBR) and GUID partition table (GPT) partition styles. We strongly recommend that you use GPT disks for the DPM storage pool.
If you use a SAN for the storage pool, we recommend that you create a separate zone for the disk and tape used on DPM. Do not mix the devices in a single zone.
You cannot add USB/1394 disks to the DPM storage pool.
We recommend that you use disks that have capacity of no more than 1.5 terabytes. Because a dynamic volume can span up to 32 disks, if you use 1.5-terabyte disks, DPM can create replica volumes of up to 48 terabytes.
Important
Some original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) include a diagnostic partition that is installed from media that they provide. The diagnostic partition might also be named the OEM partition, or the EISA partition. EISA partitions must be removed from disks before you can add the disk to the DPM storage pool.
In This Section
Calculating Capacity Requirements
Planning the Disk Configuration