Use the DPM Client application

 

Updated: May 13, 2016

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

The System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager (DPM) Client application includes features that make your protected files and folders available to you from the DPM icon displayed in the notification area (also known as the system tray). By default, when you are running the DPM Client, the DPM icon appears in the notification area. When you move the mouse pointer over the DPM icon, the DPM synchronization status information is displayed. For example, Last sync: 1 hour ago, Automatically every 4 hrs. The following options are available when you click the DPM icon in the notification area:

Synchronize now Starts the synchronization process. When the Synchronization process is running, the link changes to Cancel Synchronization.

When you synchronize data, changes on the local computer are copied to a replica on the DPM server, keeping data consistent. Synchronized data becomes available for recovery as soon as DPM creates a recovery point for the data.

You should synchronize data in accordance with your requirements. For example to minimize data loss, synchronizing every hour will ensure that data can be restored to within an hour of a data loss event.
Open DPM Client Opens the Data Protection Manager Client, and displays the last viewed tab. To view the company protection policy information set by your backup administrator, on the Summary tab, click the Company Protection Policy link.
Recover data Opens the Data Protection Manager Client, and displays the Recovery tab.

Backed up data is stored in recovery points which provide a point-in-time copy of a data replica. You can search for recovery points using the DPM Client.
Help Starts DPM Client Help. Provides feature overviews and procedures for performing protection and recovery tasks.

You can perform the following operations in the DPM Client:

  • View information and synchronize files and folders—View details of your protected files and folders, and synchronize them.

  • Protect files and folders— In addition to the files and folders that are backed up by default, your company policy might allow you to configure additional files and folders for backup. This setting is controlled by your backup administrator.

  • Recover files and folders on your computer— With DPM you can recover your files and folders from your computer in case of data loss or corruption. You start protecting your data by creating recovery points, also referred to as local snapshots of the files and folders on your computer. Your DPM administrator sets a recovery point schedule according to your company protection policy. Note that you can’t create snapshots on computers running Windows XP.

  • Recover files and folders backed up on the DPM server—DPM enables you to recover files and folders from backups stored on the DPM server that are managed by your backup administrator. To recover your data, you need to know the name of the DPM server on which the data was backed up.

View information and synchronize files and folders

  1. Click Start, point to All Programs, click System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager (DPM), and then click DPM Client.

    The DPM Client appears in the task tray.

    Note

    The DPM icon may be hidden by default in Windows 7.

  2. In the Data Protection Manager Client, click the Summary tab.

  3. On the Summary tab, DPM provides information about disk space that is used by the protected items. The first section lists the last time a synchronization was successfully performed and the synchronization schedule.

    If you experience issues with synchronizing your data, click the Details link. The Backup Failure Details dialog box appears, which contains a link that your backup administrator can use to display troubleshooting details.

    To synchronize your files and folders at this time, click Synchronize Now.

  4. To view the company protection policy information set by your backup administrator, on the Summary tab, click the Company Protection Policy link.

  5. The second section displays the latest recovery point on the DPM server, which is the time interval since the last time the recovery point was created.

Protect files and folders

  1. Click Start, point to All Programs, click System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager (DPM), and then click Data Protection Manager Client.

  2. In the Data Protection Manager Client, click the Protected Items tab.

  3. Select the files and folders that you want to protect in the tree view, and then click OK.

    To determine the data size of the selected files and folders, click Calculate.

    Note

    By default, the company protection policy set by your backup administrator might cause some files and folders to be un-protectable or protectable. To view your company protection policy, on the Summary tab, click the Company Protection Policy link.

Recover files and folders on your computer

  1. Right-click any file or folder that you want to restore, and then click Restore previous versions.

    In the Properties dialog box, on the Previous Versions tab, there is a list of available previous versions of the file or folder. The list includes files and folders that are saved to a backup as well as local recovery points.

  2. Before you restore a previous version of a file or a folder, ensure that it is the correct version. To do this, select the previous version, and then click Open to view its contents.

  3. After you verify that it is the correct version of the file or folder, click Restore.

Recover files and folders backed up on the DPM server

  1. Click Start, point to All Programs, click System Center 2012 – Data Protection Manager (DPM), and then click Data Protection Manager Client.

  2. In the DPM Client, click the Recovery tab.

  3. In the Search for recovery points on text box, type the name of DPM server on which the data was backed up, or click the Search button to start the search for the existing recovery points on the DPM server.

    Note

    To find out the name of the DPM server, contact your backup administrator.

  4. To access the backups stored on the DPM server, in the list of files and folders, click the open link that belongs to the respective recovery points.

    Note

    Available recovery points are listed in the display pane. In the display pane, the Time column lists the time stamps and the Link column lists the open links (backup folder locations on the DPM server) for the each available recovery points.

  5. Select the previous version you want to restore and then click Restore.