DPM Quick Fix: Tape backup jobs are not scheduled for one or more servers in a protection group

[System-Center-Team]

First published on TECHNET on Apr 04, 2011

If you are performing Disk to Tape (D-T) backups using System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 or 2010 (DPM), after adding data sources (DS) to a protection group (PG) for two or more protected servers, the backup jobs may not be scheduled for any of the data sources for one or more members of the PG. If you look at the scheduled jobs for the next 7 days, there will be no jobs scheduled for the effected protected server(s). Consequently, backups are not performed for any servers whose data sources are missing from the scheduled jobs. If you remove the data sources from protection for the effected server(s) and place them in their own protection group, then the backup jobs are scheduled and run as expected.

Cause

Intent Manager schedules backup jobs based on the time zone for a D-T PG. Sorting is done based on TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION.Equals() API but the job definitions are created using TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION.StandardName. If two servers have the same time zone but differ in Daylight settings, Sorting will treat them as two different time zones, but StandardName will be the same. As a result one will override the other's job definition so the final XML in the tbl_JM_JobDefinition table will not be complete.

To view all the servers names and time settings, run the following SQL Query to see if that is the problem. Look for servers in the same PG with the same time zone, but different daylightname and daylightBias settings.

Select svr.ServerName, svr.serverid, tz.Description, tz.DaylightName, tz.DaylightBias from tbl_AM_ServerTimeZone tz join dbo.tbl_AM_Server svr on tz.ServerId = svr.ServerId

Resolution

To fix the problem, check the protected servers time zone and daylight savings settings and make sure they match.  Then for the problematic server, remove the data sources from protection, remove the agent from the DPM console and re-install the agent.  DPM should pick up the new time zone and daylight savings settings and then the problem should go away.

As an alternative, you can protect the offending server in a separate protection group, enable tape co-location and set both PG up to have the exact same recovery goals and retention ranges.  DPM will write both PG's to the same tape as originally intended.

Michael Jacquet | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

The App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
The WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The SCMDM Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mdm/
The ConfigMgr Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
The SCOM 2007 Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/operationsmgr/
The SCVMM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm/
The MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
The DPM Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
The OOB Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/oob/
The Opalis Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/opalis
The Service Manager Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
The AVIcode Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/avicode
The System Center Essentials Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenteressentials
The Server App-V Team blog: http: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv