What Is a Replica?
Applies To: System Center Data Protection Manager 2010
In Data Protection Manager (DPM), a replica is a complete copy of protected data residing a single volume on the DPM server. A replica is created for each protected data source after it is added to its protection group. With co-location, multiple data sources can have their replicas residing on the same replica volume. A replica contains all the properties of the volume, including local recovery point settings, security settings, and sharing.
Note
When you protect a data source that contains a mount point, the mount point itself is not replicated; you must manually re-create the mount point when you recover the data.
Before DPM can start protecting the data sources in a protection group, a replica of the data must be created. After a replica is created for each protected volume, changes to the protected data are transferred to DPM incrementally through synchronization, according to a set schedule.
To create a replica on the DPM server, you can have DPM copy the data from the protected computer over the network or you can manually create a replica from a tape backup or other removable storage medium. Replicating the data over the network requires no intervention, but it can take several hours, depending on network bandwidth and the data size. To minimize the impact on network bandwidth, you can schedule replication for a time when network traffic is low.
Note
If you want to replicate the data over a wide area network (WAN), to avoid loading the WAN during work hours, use the network bandwidth usage throttling settings in DPM.
If your data is backed up on tape, you can manually create a replica on the DPM server from the tape. This method does not affect network bandwidth, and it can save time if you are transferring large amounts of data. However, you must manually copy the data to the DPM server and then manually synchronize the replica with a consistency check before scheduled synchronization and recovery point jobs can succeed. For more information, see How to Synchronize a Replica.
See Also
Tasks
How to Manually Create a Replica
How to Synchronize a Replica
Concepts
What Is a Consistency Check?
What Is a Recovery Point?
What Is Synchronization?