Installation Requirements

Updated: May 13, 2016

This article introduces the installation requirements and the software prerequisites for System Center DPM 2012 R2.

At the time of this writing, the software requirements for DPM 2012 R2 are as follows. Some apply only to new installations. Upgrades from DPM 2012 SP1 may not require the items with an asterisk (*).

• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later.

• DPM upgrade requires DPM 2012 SP1 UR3 (4.1.3417.0) or later.

• Pre-installed SQL Server. Only the latest versions of SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2012 are supported. While it is possible to protect SQL Server 2014 using DPM 2012 R2, SQL Server 2014 cannot be used as a DPM configuration database to store backup information for workloads it protects.

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 (setup automatically installs this if not present).

• Visual C++ 2010 Redistributables (setup automatically installs this if not present).

• Windows Single Instance (setup automatically installs this if not present).

• Windows Installer 4.5 or later (setup automatically installs this if not present).

• Windows PowerShell 3.0 (setup automatically installs this if not present).

• Microsoft Application Error Reporting (setup automatically installs this if not present).

For the most current information regarding complete hardware and software requirements for DPM 2012 R2, check Preparing your environment for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager (DPM).

Other items of note regarding the installation or upgrade of DPM 2012 R2 include the following:

• As stated above, you must have an instance of SQL Server installed and running for the DPM database. The instance can be collocated on the DPM server or on a remote computer.

• You will need a disk to be used as dedicated space for DPM data storage.

• The DPM protection agent must be installed on computers you want to protect.

• The computer on which you install DPM must be a member of an Active Directory domain.

• You must be logged on to the AD domain and have administrative privileges on the server where you want to upgrade or install DPM 2012 R2.

• You cannot install DPM on the following:

  • A management server for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. This includes any version of OpsMgr 2007 OpsMgr 2012/OpsMgr 2012 R2.

  • An application server (other than Hyper-V).

  • A computer that has cluster services enabled, including a Hyper-V cluster.

While many of the prerequisites will automatically be installed as needed when running DPM 2012 R2 setup, it is generally a good idea to have these prerequisites installed beforehand. This way, if there are an issue with the installation of a prerequisite it can be addressed before attempting the installation of DPM itself. Below we will go into detail on installing some of the required prerequisites before performing a standard DPM installation.

Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1

If you are performing an upgrade from DPM 2012 SP1 to DPM 2012 R2, you must be running DPM 2012 SP1 UR3 (version 4.1.3417.0) or later. Information on how to obtain and install Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 can be found in the following Microsoft KB article:

2836751 - Description of Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0

Microsoft .Net Framework 4.0 is required before DPM 2012 R2 will continue setup. Microsoft .NET Framework 4 is installed by default on Windows Server 2012 and later version of Windows. However, you may receive the error "Microsoft .NET Framework 4 is not installed on this computer”. To fix the issue, you can install .Net Framework 4.0 manually by running the dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe file from the \Redist\DotNetFrameworks folder on the DPM installation media.

Windows Management Framework 3.0

Windows Management Framework 3.0 is required before DPM 2012 R2 will continue setup. WMF 3.0 is installed by default on Windows Server 2012 and later version of Windows.

If you find that you need to install Windows Management Framework 3.0 manually, it can be download from Windows Management Framework 3.0.

After the installation is complete, be sure to reboot the computer before continuing setup.

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 is a required prerequisite before you can install the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1 Management tools. DPM 2012 R2 setup requires the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1 Management tools when using a remote SQL Server instance. Note that if you are going to pre-install SQL Server locally, it will install the SQL Management tools as part of SQL setup and you can skip this step.

NOTE When using a Remote SQL 2008 R2 server, the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1 management tools are backwards compatible with SQL Server 2008 R2. If SQL 2008 R2 is pre-installed locally on the DPM Server, then the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Management tools will be used by DPM.

Depending on which operating system you are using for DPM 2012 R2, you can either install .NET Framework 3.5 from the DPM installation media, or you can add it as a Windows Server 2012 feature which will require Windows 2012 installation media.

For Windows Server 2008 computers, Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 can be installed by running dotNetFx35setup.exe from the \Redist\DotNetFrameworks folder on the DPM installation media. Note that installation of this component requires Internet access.

For Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 computers, you will need to install .NET Framework 3.5 features from the Add Roles and Features wizard as shown below. During the feature installation, you will need the Windows installation media. Click on Specify an alternate source path to specify the path to the SXS folder. For example, f:\sources\sxs\

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1 Management tools

When specifying a remote SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2012 instance to use for the DPM database, DPM 2012 R2 requires that the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1 management tools be installed on the DPM Server.

NOTE As mentioned previously, when installing DPM 2012 R2 on Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2, you must install .NET Framework 3.5 Features from the Add Roles and Features wizard prior to installing the SQL Server 2012 SP1 management tools or all of the required tools will fail to be installed properly.

The Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1 management tools can be downloaded from the following location:

Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Express

Download SQLManagementStudio_X64_ENU.exe (64-bit) or SQLManagementStudio_x86_ENU.exe (32-bit) and run it to start the wizard.

When the wizard starts, select the installation option, and then click on the option New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation.

Be sure that the following features are selected, then complete the installation:

• Client Tools Connectivity

• Client Tools Backwards Compatibility

• Client Tools SDK

• Management Tools - Basic

• Management Tools - Complete

• SQL Client Connectivity SDK

To verify if a computer has all of the prerequisites installed prior to installing DPM, you can look in Control Panel -> Programs and Features. The screenshot below shows only the DPM prerequisite software that was installed manually. The .NET 3.5 framework can be seen under Windows features. The below screenshot does not include SQL Server itself for the local DPMDB.