Protecting Apps using DPM 2006

[System-Center-Team]

First published on TECHNET on May 03, 2006

Data Protection Manager 2006 aka DPM V1 primarily caters to the file server protection market. But a lot of servers out there are application servers. So if you bought DPM V1, how do you ensure protection of your application servers?

DPM has a file system filter sitting on the IO stack of the protected server’s file system that tracks all writes – this enables DPM to protect open files without a hassle. While this may work for some applications, for some other apps (especially transaction intensive ones like Exchange and SQL) backing up open files may not be good enough. These applications often have their data resident on multiple files, with logical dependencies among these files.

Here is a set of kb articles that explains how DPM v1 can be used to protect application servers like SQL and Exchange.

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  "How to use Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 to help protect an Exchange server" ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909644/en-us) .
  
  
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  "How to use Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 to help protect a SQL Server database" ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/910401/en-us ).
  
  
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  “How to use System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2006 to help protect Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003” ( http://www.support.microsoft.com/kb/915181 ).

The Data Protection Manager team is also working on directly supporting backups of important applications like Exchange and SQL in future versions of DPM.

Keep tuned in for more on this.

- Nirman Shetty