Protect SQL Server 2014 using DPM 2012 R2

Former Employee

Feb 16, 2019

First published on TECHNET on Oct 28, 2014
We are pleased to announce support for SQL Server 2014 as a workload in DPM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 4 (UR4).

Existing users of DPM will be delighted to know that there is no change in the user experience or SQL Server protection and recovery scenarios supported. Thus users can continue to backup SQL Server 2014 using DPM in the same way that they were protecting older SQL Server versions. If you are new to protecting SQL Server using DPM, go through the Protect SQL Server Data TechNet article that contains the details of all the pre-requisites.

Supported scenarios:

Protect standalone SQL Server instance

Protect SQL Server Failover Cluster instance (FCI): For details on how to configure SQL Server Failover cluster please refer to Windows Server Failover Clustering with SQL Server .

Protect SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups: The AlwaysOn availability groups can be a standalone SQL Server instances or an FCI instance. For details on how to configure SQL Server Availability Group please refer to Getting Started with AlwaysOn Availability Groups

DPM supports the following SQL Server 2014 Always On backup preferences:

Secondary only

Primary

Any Replica

Continued protection while upgrading to SQL Server 2014

Customers upgrading from older SQL Server versions to SQL Server 2014 will be delighted to know that DPM continues to back up the already protected databases, even after the SQL Server upgrade. All that needs to be done is to install DPM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 4 before the SQL Server upgrade, and let DPM take care of the data protection after the SQL Server upgrade is done – without the need for a consistency check. Backup jobs should be avoided during the SQL Server upgrade process.

Unsupported scenarios for SQL Server 2014

SQL Server 2014 cannot be used as a DPM configuration database to store backup information for workloads it protects.

SQL server 2014 added a new feature to create a database for on-premise SQL Server in Windows Azure Blob storage . DPM cannot be used to protect this configuration.

There are some known issues with "Prefer secondary" backup preference for the SQL AlwaysOn option, DPM always takes a backup from secondary; if no secondary can be found then the backup fails.

Download Update Rollup 4 for DPM to start protecting SQL Server 2014 and do send us your comments and feedback.

Please click on the relevant links below to get started and do send us your comments and feedback!