Service Pack 1 is for you

[System-Center-Team]

First published on TECHNET on Jan 13, 2009

I’m Seetharaman (Hari) Harikrishnan, General Manager of engineering for Data Protection Manager, here at Microsoft in Redmond. I’m writing today to announce the exciting news that we’ve recently globally released (RTW’d) System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) Service Pack 1. This is an important update to Microsoft’s System Center portfolio of offerings and an integral part of Microsoft’s Core Infrastructure Optimization Model, fulfilling the key backup and recovery role by providing data protection and disaster recovery for physical and virtual workloads.

Over the last several months, we’ve been working with 66 customers who have participated in the DPM SP1 Technical Adoption Program (TAP), helping us refine and optimize this important update. These customers have been using many or all of the new and expanded capabilities in SP1, including:

• Protection of Hyper-V™ virtualization platforms, including both Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and the Microsoft Hyper-V Server, has been added to the existing set of protected workloads, building on the virtualization protection originally delivered for Virtual Server 2005 R2.


• Enhanced SQL Server 2008 protection, including the addition of new protection capabilities for mirrored databases, support for parallel backups of databases within a single instance, and the ability to move data from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 for migration scenarios.


• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 receive index protection, significant catalog optimization, and support for mirrored content databases.


• Added protection for Exchange Server 2007 Standby Cluster Replication (SCR), enabling a complete disaster recovery solution that leverages SCR failover alongside DPM point-in-time restores.

Along with significantly enhancing the workloads that DPM 2007 already protected, we are very pleased to provide some new capabilities with Service Pack 1.

One of the most exciting, new features included with Service Pack 1 is backup to the Cloud using third-party solutions. Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) now provides an integrated approach for customers to backup their DPM protected data to the cloud . This new SaaS option is delivered through a relationship with Iron Mountain, providing a backup and recovery service in the cloud specifically designed to support DPM. With the interoperability of DPM and Iron Mountain CloudRecovery™ service, it is possible to select individual replicas on the DPM Server and back these up consistently to the cloud using the solution provider’s technology. Data can then be restored directly back to a location specified by the user at the same level of granularity provided by DPM. More information on the Iron Mountain service can be found here .

And we didn’t stop there. Service Pack 1 also introduces other new capabilities:

• Local Data Source Protection enabling the DPM 2007 SP1 server to act as a branch office server offering self-protecting File Services and Virtualization hosting within one platform.


• Cross-Forest Protection allowing large enterprise customers with multiple Active Directory® forests to now have even more flexibility in their DPM deployments.


• Provision for a Client DPML answers customer demand for a more cost-effective way to protect Windows XP and Windows Vista clients using the same DPM 2007 infrastructure that protects their servers

All of this new functionality builds on the features released in the DPM 2007 ‘Rollup Update’ in June 2008, which provided protection of Windows Server 2008, including Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 core, Windows Server 2008 System State and BitLocker™ support – as well as new tape media capabilities around tape sharing and media library sharing.

Outside of the Service Pack itself, we have some new synergies that are being delivered alongside the other components of System Center.

Microsoft also recently released a Management Pack for DPM 2007 to enable System Center Operations Manager 2007 to monitor and manage DPM deployments, providing an enterprise view of all of the DPM servers and protected workloads, as well as knowledge-based troubleshooting and optimization guidance from a central console. As with most management packs, the instrumentation, knowledge of key metrics to be monitored, and collective wisdom for root cause analysis and alert rollup was developed by the DPM Product Group, the same folks who developed the product itself.  This knowledge and expertise is then encapsulated into a redistributable software package for use within the enterprise console of Operations Manager, another member of the System Center family of management products.

Also, we have begun delivering guidance on new ‘Disaster Recovery’ scenarios that leverage several System Center technologies, along with Hyper-V, to bring business continuity and disaster recovery to many mainstream Windows environments that previously thought of disaster recovery as necessary, but cost-prohibitive. By leveraging Virtual Machine Manager’s P2V conversion capabilities, alongside of its Smart Placement, paired with DPM 2007 SP1 for data protection, and Operations Manager to monitor, manage and drive the entire scenario – Microsoft customers now have an efficient and cost-effective way to deploy disaster preparedness using management tools that many already own!! We’ll be delivering a TechNet webcast on this early this year as well.

As you can see, we have a lot to be excited about with the release of Service Pack 1 for DPM 2007. And our early customers have been excited, too. Check out Bala’s blog (LINK) on the initial customer feedback to Service Pack 1, as well as some blogs from our actual customers on their experience with it.

In fact, if you really want to “see” Service Pack 1, check out the series of podcasts (LINK http://edge.technet.com/tags/DPM ) that we’ve done on several of the SP1 features and topics. As you are looking at deploying your new SharePoint farm, your Hyper-V platforms, or your new SQL Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 environment, know that the Microsoft platforms that you are deploying are ready to be backed up by Microsoft as well.

To the DPM engineering and business groups, Congratulations on a great release!

To our customers and partners, thank you on behalf of DPM for your interest and partnership.

Service Pack 1 is for you!

Hari