IT Core Blog

Documentation for DPM 2010

Planning a System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 Deployment
Deploying System Center Data Protection Manager 2010
Data Protection Manager 2010 Operations Guide
Data Protection Manager 2010 Troubleshooting Guide

Acording with Ben Armstrong and KB982210 - The startup time increases every time after you back up the data on all the disks of the computer in Windows Server 2008 R2 if the computer runs some virtual machines.

Note: the KB982210 applies to Windows Server 2008 R2 (not Windows Server 2008).

Additional Errors:

Log Name: System
Source: PlugPlayManager
Date: date time
Event ID: 12
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: computer name
Description:
The device ‘MSFT Virtual HD SCSI Disk Device’ (SCSI\Disk&Ven_MSFT&Prod_Virtual_HD\ GUID ) disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal.

Short description by Ben Armstrong:
Whenever we backup a virtual machine using VSS, we momentarily connect the backup copy of the virtual machines virtual hard disks to the parent partition in order to clean them up after backup.  Unfortunately with Windows Server 2008 R2 a new plug-and-play entry would get created in the Windows registry each time that we did this.  Over time this would cause the registry to get larger and larger, which would in turn slow down the Windows boot process.

Here’s some interesting sessions for virtualization from TechEd.

Networking and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V: Deployment Considerations

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2: Advanced Virtualization Management

The Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Top 20 Must-Have Customizations

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and Virtual Machine Manager: Monitoring the Service Stack

See the Largest Mission Critical Deployment of Microsoft SQL Server around the World

Check the Latest Videos from TechEd North America

Have Fun

According with DPM Team, a Dynamic Disk Hotfix was released by Microsoft.

A potential problem with Volume Manager on Windows Server 2008 systems may lead to data loss.  This hot fix does not apply to Windows Server 2008 R2 nor does it apply to Vista.

Microsoft recommends that you apply this hotfix on any Windows Server 2008 platform that is currently using or planning to use dynamic disks. This hot fix is not DPM-specific.  However, because DPM servers do utilize dynamic disks, it is important to apply this hotfix on WS08-based DPM servers so that your backup-data is not lost from the DPM storage pool.

For more information please read the link below:
962975    Dynamic disks are marked as “Invalid” on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista when you bring the disks online, take the disks offline, or restart the computer if Data Protection Manager is installed

Microsoft released How To Protect Hyper-V with DPM 2010 (currently in RC stage) white paper , this document includes:

• Protection for Live Migration scenarios, including Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)
• Item level recovery (ILR) for restoring individual items from a host-based backup of a VM
• Restoring VMs to different Hyper-V hosts than where they were backed up

 ”Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 (DPM) provides continuous data protection for virtual machines hosted on servers running Microsoft’s Hyper-V. This protection includes online backup of supported guest virtual machines hosted on clustered or standalone systems; protection of virtual machines during the live migration process; and, item level recovery from host-level backup. DPM 2010 offers disk-to-disk, disk-to-tape, and disk-to-disk-to-tape technologies; all of which maintain the business value of a virtualized infrastructure by ensuring that it is better protected and always available.“

Finally!!!
This was something that I was waiting for With DPM 2010 most Administrators will see many “old” problems and incompatibilities solved, especially at Virtualization level. With DPM 2010, IT Admins will have the ability to backup VM’s at the host level when the VM’s are stored on a Cluster Shared Volume (CSV).

You can download the DPM 2010 release candidate from Connect and watch the webcast video here.