What’s New in Data Protection Manager 2006 SP1

Microsoft® System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2006 Service Pack 1 (SP1) enables you to protect more types of file servers, provides an interface for configuring your Microsoft Update selection, and includes updates previously released as individual hotfixes. The DPM product team recommends that every installation of DPM take advantage of these updates by installing DPM SP1.

Important

Future DPM 2006 hotfixes can be installed on computers running DPM SP1 only.

For more information about the changes in DPM SP1, see the following sections:

• Support for 64-bit Protection

• Updated System Requirements

• Support for Clustered Servers

• Protection for SIS-enabled Servers

• Microsoft Update Opt-in

• Change to Disk Allocation Formula

• Other Changes in SP1

Support for 64-bit Protection

DPM SP1 can protect x64-based computers, which are computers running 64-bit processors with an extended x86 instruction set, such as the Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) AMD64 and Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) processor lines.

DPM SP1 cannot protect Itanium-based computers, which use 64-bit Itanium processors from Intel.

The protected x64-based computer must be running Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

Updated System Requirements

After DPM 2006 was released, Microsoft released the Windows Server 2003 R2 operating systems. As a result, the system requirements for DPM SP1 are updated as follows:

Support for Clustered Servers

In DPM 2006, file agent installation failed when you attempted to install the agent on a server that was a member of a server cluster.

In DPM 2006 SP1, you can install the file agent on a server that is a member of a server cluster. You can then protect all shares or volumes that are currently hosted on the physical node on which the agent is installed.

Protecting a Clustered Server

How to set up protection for a server in a cluster

1. Install the DPM file agent on the cluster node using the standard procedure for installing agents. For instructions, see "How to install a file agent" in DPM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=46350).

2. After you restart the cluster node to complete the agent installation, create a new protection group to protect the shares or volumes on the clustered server or add the shares or volumes to an existing protection group. For instructions, see "How to create a protection group" or "How to add members" in DPM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=46350).

Cluster Failover and Failback

Two important concepts in clustering that can impact DPM protection are failover and failback.

If an individual application in a server cluster fails, but the node does not, the cluster service typically tries to restart the application on the same node. If that fails, it moves the application's resources and restarts them on another node of the server cluster. This process is called failover. When a node becomes inactive for any reason, the cluster service fails over any groups hosted by the node.

When the node becomes active again, the cluster service can failback the groups originally hosted by the node. The cluster service fails back a group using the same procedures it performs during failover. That is, the cluster service takes all of the resources in the group offline, moves the group to the original node, and then brings all of the resources in the group online.

When Failover Occurs

If DPM attempts to communicate with the server node and the server node is unavailable, DPM generates an alert.

Failback and Protection

When a protected server node fails over and the next scheduled synchronization occurs before the protected resources are failed back to the protected server node, DPM generates an alert that the protected volume is missing and that cluster failover could potentially be a cause for the missing volume. DPM also marks the replica as inconsistent. When the resources are failed back to the protected server node, the administrator can perform a manual consistency check or wait for a scheduled consistency check to occur. Protection continues successfully after the check occurs.

Failover Without Failback

When the protected cluster node fails over, DPM cannot continue protection of its resources until the resources fail back. If the resources cannot fail back within an acceptable period of time, you can continue protection of those resources by protecting the physical cluster node that now hosts the resources. The resources will be treated as a new datasource and DPM will create a new replica for the datasource.

The shadow copies of the resources on the cluster node that failed over will continue to be available for end-user recovery, if it is enabled.

When a Server is Removed from a Cluster

How to change a protected server from clustered configuration to non-clustered configuration

1. Uninstall the file agent. For instructions, see "How to uninstall a file agent" in DPM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=46350).

2. Remove the file server from the cluster. For instructions, see the Knowledge Base article "How to Uninstall the Cluster Service on a Windows Server 2003 Cluster" (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=68599).

3. Install the file agent on the file server that is now a stand-alone server in the domain. For instructions, see "How to install a file agent" in DPM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=46350).

4. Create a new protection group to protect the shares or volumes on the file server or add the shares or volumes to an existing protection group. For instructions, see "How to create a protection group" or "How to add members" in DPM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=46350).

Protection for SIS-enabled Servers

DPM 2006 SP1 installs a filter that enables DPM to protect servers that have SIS-enabled volumes. You must also install SIS on the DPM server.

Single Instance Store, or SIS, is an architecture designed to maintain duplicate files with a minimum of disk, cache, and backup media overhead. SIS reduces the amount of space in a volume that data uses by removing duplicate files and placing them in a common store directory (\SIS Common Store), which is a hidden directory in the root directory of the volume.

To install SIS on the DPM server, you must install Remote Installation Servicess (RIS); SIS is included as a RIS component. For instructions, see the procedure "Install Windows Server 2003 RIS" in the Knowledge Base article "How To Use Remote Installation Service to Install Windows Server 2003 on Remote Computers" (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=71971)

The Knowledge Base article "The Single Instance Store feature is not supported in Data Protection Manager" (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=71972) does not apply to DPM 2006 SP1.

Microsoft Update Opt-in

When you install DPM 2006 SP1, you can also opt in to Microsoft Update.

Microsoft Update is a service from Microsoft that delivers required updates from the Microsoft Update Catalog. The Microsoft Update Catalog is a repository for Microsoft software updates and contains updates that address security and reliability issues. The Microsoft Update service queries the Microsoft Update Catalog to determine what updates are available for the computer that Microsoft Update is installed on.

You can change your Microsoft Update opt-in decision at any time after you install DPM 2006 SP1. To change your Microsoft Update opt-in decision, see the Microsoft Update Web site (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=74122).

Change to Disk Allocation Formula

DPM 2006 SP1 changes the formula for allocating disk space in the DPM storage pool. This fix was previous available as described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 910330, "Stored shadow copies are overwritten in Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2006" (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=68598).

In DPM 2006, shadow copies of backup replicas could be overwritten even though sufficient storage space was allocated. This typically occurred only for protected volumes with less than 25 gigabytes (GB) of data. DPM 2006 SP1 prevents this problem by changing the minimum disk space threshold for shadow copy area disk allocations.

The new formula will not be applied to existing disk allocations.

DPM SP1 calculates default space allocation for the shadow copy area as shown in Table 1. The other formulas remain the same as in DPM 2006.

Table 1    How DPM Calculates Default Space Allocations for Volumes

Other Changes in SP1

• DPM SP1 includes the product updates previously published as hotfix 911169. For details about hotfix 911169, see Knowledge Base article "You receive an error message and the replica state is invalid in Data Protection Manager 2006" (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=68597).

• In DPM 2006, when the amount of space required for shadow copies exceeded the allocated space, all shadow copies could be deleted without notification to the user. DPM SP1 will ensure that at least the latest shadow copy is retained and generate an alert to increase the disk allocation for shadow copies.

• DPM SP1 adds new error messages to provide more specific information during file agent installation.

• DPM SP1 includes fixes for the following issues:

  • Duplicate copies of a protected share are created on the DPM server.

  • Unable to update end-user recovery permissions alert is generated for each synchronization.

  • The SQL Server Reporting Services service is not running alert occurs after DPM is restored.

  • Consistency checks fail with error code 909.