We are very excited to announce that the ‘Rollup Update’ for System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 is now available.

There are new workloads to be protected, as well as new features in this update, including:

Windows Server 2008 support

Run DPM2007 Server on a Windows Server 2008 platform

Protect Windows Server 2008 – including Core systems

Protect Windows Server 2008 System State

While DPM2007 has actually been protecting “Longhorn” since Beta 3, this makes Windows Server 2008 a supported protected workload

Protect SQL Server 2008

Including the ability to restore SQL Server 2005 databases to a SQL Server 2008 server for test migrations and ensuring that after you have updated your environment to SQL Server 2008, you will still be able to recover older SQL 2005 databases, when needed.

While DPM has actually been protecting "Katmai" since customer technology preview 4 (July 2007), this makes SQL Server 2008 a supported protect-able workload

Protect clustered Virtual Server 2005 R2 hosts

DPM 2007 could already protect clustered-Exchange, clustered-SQL Server and clustered-File Services … but clustered virtualization hosts was not initially available in DPM 2007 RTM.  Now for those environments that understand that as they rely on virtualization, the virtualization host needs to be highly available – those platforms are protected by DPM, as well.

New media capabilities – added based on feedback from some of our early DPM enterprise customers

Tape media sharing – so that multiple protection groups with similar tape retention periods can now share tapes

Tape library sharing – multiple DPM servers can now share your enterprise tape library silo’s.  This one has been running in MSIT for a while.

 

For more details on what is included in the DPM 2007 “Rollup Update” or in the upcoming Service Pack 1, please check out:

TechNet webcast on “What is coming next for DPM 2007” from April 23, 2008

 

The DPM 2007 Rollup Update is now available via Microsoft Update, if your DPM server is opt’ed in for updates … or it is downloadable from:

Data Protection Manager 2007 - Rollup Update - x86

Data Protection Manager 2007 - Rollup Update - x64

 

Microsoft is committed to continuing to make DPM2007 an ideal solution for protecting and recovering your Windows infrastructure.  So, stay tuned as we get ready to launch the beta for DPM 2007 Service Pack 1, targeted for later this Summer – including the updates listed above, PLUS protection for Hyper-V, more capabilities around SQL Server databases, new features for protecting SharePoint farms and some other features that we are keeping a surprise for now.  As always, you’ll hear about them first here – on the DPM blog site.

 

-- Balaji Hariharan, Jason Buffington

Tab Completion<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The most fascinating part of DPM Management Shell is Tab Completion of cmdlets. By learning the common verbs in Powershell (like Get, Set, Start etc.), a Windows or an Exchange admin can easily use that knowledge and learn the DPM cmdlets. This is because the same verbs are used in DPM Management Shell too.

 

For example: To get the list of protected servers backed-up by a DPM server, one needs to just type Get-P and keep pressing tab. This would result in Powershell suggesting the various cmdlets, and you can choose the right one needed. The ones that you would see in this example are - Get-Process, Get-ProductionCluster, Get-ProductionServer etc.

 

In addition, if you can also tab complete the various parameter names too in the same way, by typing a “-“ after the cmdlet name and pressing tab.

 

 

Examples of cmdlet usage(Get-Help <cmdlet> -example)

 

Getting directly to the example usage of a cmdlet can be done easily with optional parameters in Get-Help - Get-help <cmdletname> -example. This will directly print only the example usages of the cmdlet:

 

For example:

 

PS D:\> Get-help Get-ProtectionGroup -example

 

NAME

 Get-ProtectionGroup

 

SYNOPSIS

 Retrieves the list of protection groups on the DPM server.

 

EXAMPLE 1

 Get-ProtectionGroup -DPMServerName TestingServer

 

This command returns the protection group on a DPM server.

 

Getting only the cmdlet syntax (Get-Command <cmdlet> -syntax)

Another quick help about the syntax of cmdlet would be get by typing

 

PS D:\> Get-Command Get-Datasource -syntax

 

Get-Datasource [-DPMServerName] <String> [-Inactive] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>]

 

Get-Datasource [-ProductionServer] <ProductionServer> [-Async] [-Inquire] [-Replica] [-Tag <Object>] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>]

 

Get-Datasource [-ProtectionGroup] <ProtectionGroup> [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>]

 

Get-Datasource [-DPMServerName] <String> [-SearchPath] <String> [[-ProductionServerName] <String>] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>]

 

 

Using the object member properties (Get-Member)

With the help of get-member you can verify/set the property of the object.

 

PS D:\> $pg = Get-ProtectionGroup “MyDPMServerName”

PS D:\> $pg | get-member

 

TypeName: Microsoft.Internal.EnterpriseStorage.Dls.UI.ObjectModel.OMCommon.ProtectionGroup

 

Name                                  MemberType    Definition

----                                    ----------       ----------

AddProtectableObject             Method           System.Void AddProtecta...

AddProtectionOptions             Method           System.Void AddProtecti...

.

.

FriendlyName                        Property           System.String FriendlyN...

InitializationType                   Property           Microsoft.Internal.Ente...

 

Now these properties can be used to filter and get a specific PG.

 

For Example:

 

$clipg = Get-ProtectionGroup $dpmname | where { $_.FriendlyName -eq $pgname }

 

 

CLI Help Updates and Errata

Any additional help information or errata gets updated per cmdlet and is available at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=95130.

 

- Mukul Shekhawat, Balaji Hariharan

While using the DPM Management Shell, one would like to have a list of all cmdlets and its short help for quick reference. Also, we heard it would be useful to group the various cmdlets by the function they do – e.g. Library, Disk, Recovery or Protection related etc. Keeping this in mind, we have published this quick reference for you based on DPM 2007 Management Shell. You could take a print out of this and keep it handy while creating scripts. Btw, new cmdlets or parameters may be introduced in future versions or service packs of DPM, so you might want to update this list manually.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

- Mukul Shekhawat, Balaji Hariharan

We are happy to inform you that the Update Feature pack is now available for download here:<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

x86:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e9e1fe35-b175-40a8-8378-2f306ccc9e28&DisplayLang=en 

 

x64:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ad5cd1a2-9b87-4a2c-90a2-9dbaf1024310&DisplayLang=en

The features included in this release are:
 ·         Tape library sharing across multiple DPM servers
 ·         Katmai (SQL 2008) support
 ·        Clustered virtual server support
 ·         Protection of Windows Server 2008
 ·         DPM install on Windows Server 2008 – Using improved VSS infrastructure, shrinking of  
         volumes, RemoteApp support etc.
 ·        Co-location of data from multiple PGs onto a single tape

 

- Balaji Hariharan

This post is a summary of the most common support cases that we have been hearing so far in the area of DPM Protection Agent installation on a target server. We capture the following here in the excel sheet attached - common issues, why they fail, and the quick resolution steps to get past these issues. Hope this is useful, and let us know your feedback to make this better in future.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

-   Mukul Shekhawat, Balaji Hariharan

 

 

Some customers had non-DPM issues, like network issues because of which consistency check (CC) jobs failed too often. For the benefit of them, we have added a script that would re-try CC until it succeeds. Note: In some cases, CC would impact the protected computer’s performance and hence use this script appropriately.

 

- Vikash Jain

Things got hairy enough last week that I forgot to post, but my hosting provider got the problem sorted out and the website is back online.

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

As a customer of a product that we love, we always love to see what are the new features that are cooking in the DPM labs. We take this opportunity to take a preview of the cool new features that are coming soon…

 

Feature of the week: The all new DPM Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

 

Introduction

Operations Manager 2007 (OpsMgr) is a cool new management software with new concepts in monitoring as compared to its previous version, Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM). The first and foremost of them is the class/object based modeling of my application, and monitoring the various states changes of these objects around the four pillars - Availability, Configuration, Security and Performance. This brings in consistency across multiple management packs (MP).

 

But the cool by-product is that the MP itself would double-up as a remote and centralized UI, as in the case of the DPM MP – by giving glimpse of all the admin managed objects and its various properties - like what is the number of recovery points in a datasource, or how much size does it occupy, or what tape libraries are working fine etc. In fact, it also build a visual picture (Diagram view) which gives a neat picture of the DPM setup and how the health roll-ups. The built-in break-fix help remotely fix issues, whereas the health explorer helps show the entire details of all facets to monitoring.

 

The cool features to watch out in the new pack are:

·         Diagram View to see entire DPM deployment and its managed objects

o   MP can be used like a Remote UI to see various properties like disk usage, library details, protection and recovery details etc.

·         State views to see the current state of all objects

·         Health Explorer that shows how the MP monitors the entire system, along with Product Knowledge for all.

·         Alert view where the actionable to-do items for operators are logged, that talk about what has failed, and how to fix it.

·         Break-Fix tasks  for common troubleshooting like re-running backups, fix replica errors in the remote DPM server directly without having to terminal service into it.

 

The pack would be available in Q4 of this year, and watch out for a sneak-preview demo of the same, pretty soon. We are sure you would love it.

 

- Balaji Hariharan

If you've tried to get to masteringdpm.com in the past couple of days, you may have gotten a cryptic error message instead of a site with DPM goodness. I'm working with my hosting provider to get it put back up ASAP and will post again once it's back up.

While I was at the Tech-Ed NA IT Pro conference last week, Jason Buffington and I took the chance to invade the Tech-Ed Online fishbowl studio and record a quick Tech-Talk on using DPM. You can now view it online on the Tech-Ed IT Pro page and the Library page, or stream it directly. Now that Tech-Ed's over, maybe we'll both find the time to be on Xbox Live at the same time so we can continue our discussion in Call of Duty 4...

The scripts posted in this blog require knowledge of Powershell and DPM cmdlets. So we thought we would present some tips ‘n tricks to become power users!<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

 

Introduction

The first difference between any normal Command Line Interface (CLI) (typically, Windows cmd.exe based environment) & Powershell is that, Powershell is a full blown .Net environment and is object oriented. In other words, it treats all input/output parameters as objects and when you pipe one command to another, objects flow instead of plain text as in old shells. Similarly, DPM Management Shell also takes inputs in the form of objects – for example, DPM, Protection Group, Datasource, Library, Tape, Tape Drive, Disk etc. are all .Net objects. Let’s now move on to more interesting stuff.

 

Finding cmdLets (Get-Command or gcm)

For knowing all the cmdLets present in the Powershell instance, use Get-Command (or gcm in short). When run, the output will be something like this:

 

PS D:\ > Get-command

 

CommandType   Name                  Definition

-----------       ----                   ----------

Cmdlet              Add-Content       Add-Content [-Path] <String[...

Cmdlet              Add-DPMDisk       Add-DPMDisk [-DPMDisk] <Disk...

Cmdlet              Add-History         Add-History [[-InputObject] ...

Cmdlet              Add-Member        Add-Member [-MemberType]

Cmdlet              Add-PSSnapin      Add-PSSnapin [-Name] <String...

Cmdlet              Add-Tape            Add-Tape [-DPMLibrary] <Libr...

Cmdlet              Clear-Content      Clear-Content [-Path] <Strin...

 

Finding DPM cmdLets (Get-DPMCommand)

Similarly for getting all the cmdLets belonging to only DPM, use the Get-DPMCommand.

 

PS D:\ > Get-DPMCommand

 

CommandType  Name                      Definition

-----------      ----                        ----------

Cmdlet            Add-DPMDisk             Add-DPMDisk [-DPMDisk] <Disk...

Cmdlet            Add-Tape                 Add-Tape [-DPMLibrary] <Libr...

Cmdlet            Connect-DPMServer   Connect-DPMServer [-DPMServe...

Cmdlet            Disable-DPMLibrary     Disable-DPMLibrary [-DPMLibr...

Cmdlet            Disable-TapeDrive      Disable-TapeDrive [-TapeDriv...

 

How to use a cmdlet?

 

1. Understanding the cmdlet parameters (Get-Command and Format-List)

There are two parts to understanding a cmdlet. First, to look at the various input parameters and various usages, you can use the Get-Command itself on a specific cmdlet, in the following fashion – Get-Command <cmdlet> | format-list (or gcm <cmdlet> | fl, in short).

 

PS C:\> gcm Set-Alias | fl

 

Name                     : Set-Alias

CommandType         : Cmdlet

Definition                : Set-Alias [-Name] <String> [-Value] <String> [-Description <String>] [-Option <ScopedItemOptions>] [-PassThru] [-Scope <String>] [-Force] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction <ActionPreference>] [-ErrorVariable <String>] [-OutVariable <String>] [-OutBuffer <Int32>] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm]

 

 

2. Reading Help documentation for a cmdlet (Get-Help or help)

For reading the Help documentation for any cmdlet use the following (Get-Help or help)

 

Get-Help <cmdlet>

 

For example:

 

PS D:\ > Get-Help Add-Tape

 

NAME

    Add-Tape

 

SYNOPSIS

    Adds a tape to a DPM library.

 

 

SYNTAX

    Add-Tape [-DPMLibrary] <Library> [-Async] [-JobStateChangedEventHandler <Jo

    bStateChangedEventHandler>] [<CommonParameters>]

…..

 

3. Getting detailed help, and seeing sample scripts

For seeing additional information on each of the cmdLets, you can use the –Full or –Detailed parameters in Get-Help.

 

e.g.    Get-Help Add-Tape –Detailed

Get-Help Add-Tape –Full

 

DPM Object Properties (Get-Member or gm)

 

The DPM cmdlets are logically divided in three groups Protection (Backup), Recovery and Management related (Library & Disk). All the tasks that can be done from the DPM UI in these areas, can be done from the cmdLets in these areas. Infact, the CLI provides additional features than the UI, in some scenarios.

 

You can get the member properties of any object by pipelining the output to Get-Member:

 

For example:

 

$lib = Get-DPMLibrary -DPMServerName “Testing Server Name”

$lib | Get-Member

 

Will give all the members of $lib (Library object).

 

PS D:\ > $lib | get-member

 

TypeName: Microsoft.Internal.EnterpriseStorage.Dls.UI.ObjectModel.LibraryMan

agement.Library

 

Name              MemberType    Definition

----                ----------       ---------

ClearCache       Method            System.Void ClearCache()

Dispose            Method            System.Void Dispose()

 

We hope this was useful, feel free to add comments as feedback to this post. And in the next version, we can add more tricks!

 

- Mukul Shekawat, Balaji Hariharan

When a disaster occurs, and you lose your replica volume for any datasource, you could re-seed the replica from the backed-up data you have in tape. This little script initializes replica from a tape recovery point. The parameters have to be customized for your environment first as given below.  <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Save the attached file as a .ps1 file and invoke through the DPM Management Shell.

 

- Madhan S

The attached script removes all inactive datasources under a given DPM server. It provides options to remove inactive datasources on disk/tape/both. Save this as a .ps1 file and invoke it from inside the DPM Management Shell. Please contact us if you need any further assistance in running the script or face any issues.

 

- Madhan S<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The DPM Team would like to understand your Microsoft® SQL Server backups needs so we can serve you better. We need feedback from people who back up SQL Servers regularly - people like you!  Please take a moment to complete this survey and help the DPM Team for Ultimate SQL Backup Improvements!

Click here to begin the survey: https://connect.microsoft.com/Survey/Survey.aspx?SurveyID=6110&SiteID=205

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002020

“When Sporton discovered how completely Data Protection Manager met their criteria, and that it was significantly more cost efficient than other products they had been evaluating, including offerings from CommVault and Symantec, they knew they had found the ideal solution.”

Organization Profile

Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, Sporton International Inc. (Sporton) is the largest electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) authentication, safety regulation detection, wireless network communication authentication, mobile phone authentication, and digital television authentication company in the market.

Business Situation

Sporton’s existing process for backing up and restoring data had become inefficient and unreliable. The company needed an easy-to-use solution that would reduce the time, resources, and budget required to manage their backup and recovery processes across for their corporate headquarters and their remote offices in Taiwan, China, and Korea.

Solution

By deploying a solution based on Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007, Sporton was able to reduce their total IT backup and recovery overhead dramatically, with faster deployment, decreased time to back up and recover data, decreased staff overhead, and reduced need for support and maintenance.

Benefits

· 70% reduction in backup and recovery overhead

· 90% decrease in time to perform daily backups

· 70% reduction in time to troubleshoot back errors

· 90% decrease in file recovery time

· 70% savings in annual tape expenses

· 20% reduction in annual IT staff and maintenance

Vertical Industries
Telecommunications
Wireless Telecommunications Industry

Country/Region
Taiwan

For more DPM Case Studies -- click here

 

One of the more common questions that we hear from DPM customers is around the DPM dependency on the Exchange RSG, while other backup technologies do not require it.

 

How Microsoft customers were protecting Exchange previously

When Microsoft looked at how customers were protecting Windows applications today, we found two troubling scenarios:

1. Most customers were using one or more technologies for traditional nightly tape backup, particularly within heterogeneous environments.  In addition, many were using or considering the use of different technologies for disk-to-disk replication, often per workload.  And some were also using a third type of storage technology for long-distance synchronization for disaster recovery or business continuity solutions.  Often the mix of these solutions from various vendors created their own supportability issues, based on interoperability as well as multiple management tools and monitoring views.

2. Many customers expressed frustration over a support gap between protection/recovery solutions and the workloads themselves.  We have often heard customers and partners complain that while their backup software reported successful backups and their recoveries reported complete, when they attempt to bring the data online, they either can’t or discover corruption. 

· Calling the backup vendor, they are told that it must be the application. 

· Calling Microsoft support, we provide best effort support but sometimes surmise that the data was not backed-up or restored properly. 

There isn’t necessarily fault here, just the reality of multiple vendors with multiple approaches to solving the problem.

DPM 2007 was designed with these two scenarios in mind:

1. To provide a consistent and unified disk-to-disk-to-tape experience, that included near-continuous protection, routine tape backup and disaster recovery long-distance replication within a single protection product. 

2. Provide the best possible backup and recovery solution that assured not only reliability, but also supportability.

Strategic Choices for how DPM does what it does

To do this, we did make some strategic choices.  Because there were already several heterogeneous backup technologies that many customers believe fall short around complex Windows server application deployments – we chose to focus on the workloads that we are committed to, namely the Microsoft platforms and products: Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint products and technologies, and our virtualization environments. 

The other strong commitment we made was to use only the backup and recovery methods that are wholly supported by the product teams of the workloads we are protecting:

• To protect data, we rely on the Volume Shadowcopy Services capabilities that Microsoft has been providing since Windows Server 2003 and the application servers of that timeframe.  Almost every DPM protected workload uses a VSS writer that is provided by that product team, or other backup mechanism provided by the workload itself, as the best known and most supported way to secure that information -- as it was intended from those who know the inner-workings of the application itself.   These are not hidden mechanisms or secret calls - they are well published as the intended mechanisms provided by the application as the intended way to back them up.  But many legacy protection products choose to use other methods.

• To restore data, we comply with the restoration capabilities and architecture of the application.  In the case of Exchange, that means using the Recovery Storage Group – and specifically restoring the database into the RSG, and then using Exchange tools to selectively restore more granular objects.  In the case of SharePoint, we use the ‘Recovery Farm’ capability that the SharePoint team developed for that purpose.  In each case, our restore capability is tied to the functionality provided by that platform.  Each protected workload has its own restore capabilities, and DPM is specifically designed to leverage them.   Again, these mechanisms are well published, but not followed by some legacy protection products.

Supportability for Exchange protection solutions

While we are aware that there are some other backup products which offer a restore experience that is perceived as more integrated or transparent, this experience is made possible by reverse engineering the Exchange database and the use of other processes which are not supportable by the Exchange team. These approaches create a risk of database corruption in your Exchange installation and limits the Exchange team’s ability to fully support that installation should you encounter problems later.

Even before DPM was released, Microsoft saw significant issues with some backup technologies that tried to synthesize Exchange information stores to selectively restore data – and then push it directly back into the production database.  This sometimes resulted in latent corruption that was only later discovered.  The Exchange team published a number of KB articles detailing these risks and the associated support limitations they create, including:

KB 904845 addresses “Microsoft support policy for third-party products that modify or extract Exchange database contents”

Similarly, for disk-to-disk replication mechanisms, KB 895847 addresses “Multi-site data replication support for Exchange Server”

What is the future of Mailbox Recovery?

Looking towards the future, we are actively working with the application product teams to help them create innovative solutions that include restore capabilities that are either more direct (instead of the RSG/Recovery Farm), more granular (mailbox/message), or perhaps simply more transparent – but which are also fully supported – at which point, DPM will most happily deliver on that experience.  We are making progress in that front.  But innovation takes time.

In the near term, we have identified select partners that have been able to enhance the DPM backup capability with a more granular recovery mechanism, but in a way that is understood and approved of by the application product teams – e.g. Quest Recovery Manager for Exchange, enabling mailbox & message level restoration from the DPM restored replica.  Details can be found on their site.

Finally, we also wanted to address some inaccuracies in the DPM Whitepaper on “How to Protect Exchange with DPM 2007”.  The initial release inadvertently glossed over some of the details and did not reflect the full capabilities and processes for mailbox recovery correctly.  When we learned that the paper was not providing clear guidance from some Exchange community folks and DPM customers, we immediately pulled the paper to correct it.  We worked with the DPM engineering team as well as an Exchange MVP writer to provide better guidance, and it was re-posted last week at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=92497.

We hope this clarifies why DPM does what it does around Exchange protection to ensure that our customers have not only a great backup solution that protects Exchange in the manner that the Exchange developers believe that it should -- leveraging its VSS writer for fast block-based synchronization along with log backups, with additional benefits like offloading ESEUTIL and providing flexible protection options for CCR environments -- but also a strong and flexible recovery solution that allows for storage group, database and yes, mailbox, recovery in a way that is wholly supported and sustainable.

Jason Buffington

DPM Senior Technical Product Manager

Windows Storage Solutions

Just a quick note to let you  all know that the Protecting Exchange Server with DPM 2007 white paper is available for download from Microsoft. This is the same white paper I worked on for them last year, but freshly revised to include more guidance around mailbox-level recovery.

I'll be giving a talk around this topic next week at Tech-Ed (IT Pro) in Orlando, session number MGT369. Hope to see you there! (Yes, this is the same talk I did at Exchange Connections in Orlando and in MMS in Vegas a month ago; it seems to be a popular session!)

The following was posted by Harsh Mittal, the Exchange protection feature lead with the DPM product team.  For more information around protecting Microsoft Exchange with Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007, please check out:

How to protect Exchange Server with DPM 2007 - resources on www.microsoft.com/DPM

Revised technical whitepaper, covering these concepts and many others

As more and more data is stored in electronic formats, data backup and recovery is increasingly becoming a key business requirement. Apart from being an operational requirement, today companies also may need to maintain a backup of their data for other reasons such as to fulfill legal requirements. Data comes in various forms, such as operational data, accounting information, and emails among others.

In this blog post, we look at Exchange data recovery goals and why Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM) is an effective solution to protect emails and mailboxes on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 (Exchange).

Mailbox/mail item recoveries requests can be broadly classified as:

·         Short-term

·         Long-term

The data retention features in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 do provide for short-term retention and recovery of data, thereby not always necessitating an external backup solution for short-term retention within the server.  This does not necessarily translate to not requiring a recovery scenario for failed servers, components or site-level calamities. 

Above and beyond short term recovery, an external backup solution is required for long-term retention and recovery. DPM is designed as a best-of-breed data retention and recovery solution for Exchange. DPM’s recovery point search, mailbox cataloging and consistency check features within DPM provides users with a great experience when it comes to recovering an Exchange mailbox. DPM does all this while staying complaint to the Exchange-support recovery processes to support data consistency and reliability.

Short term recovery

A typical recovery request usually results from accidental deletions of an email or a mailbox. The error is typically noticed within days or, at worst, weeks of the incident. Microsoft Exchange’s Deleted Item Retention and Mailbox Retention features allow you to recover deleted content without the involvement of backup infrastructure.

Using the Deleted Item Retention feature the end user can directly recover deleted items from Microsoft Outlook without the intervention of the Exchange administrator. The recovery of hard-deleted (Shift + Delete) emails is also supported.

The Deleted Mailbox Retention feature allows the administrator to recover deleted mailboxes.

The Exchange administrator, based on the organization’s requirements, can set the time limit for such retrieval. By default, Exchange 2007 enables deleted item retention for 14 days and deleted mailbox retention for 30 days. Both these features require the recovery to take place within the retention period.

Exchange’s recovery features come at storage cost, the longer the retention period, the more storage required on the server. Moving data to tape for reducing cost will increase the recovery time, as the database will have to be staged to disk before restoring mail/mailbox. The amount of required storage will vary based on number of users, and their messaging-related behavior. Any solution will be a tradeoff between recovery time and cost.

Long Term Recovery

While Exchange’s out-of-box data retention features are impressive and suffice for short-term recovery needs, they are not designed to protect data over longer periods. Understanding this need, Exchange has provided technologies that allow partners to build long-term backup and recovery solutions.

A typical request would require a set of emails or copy of the mailbox to be retrieved from a specific point in time, possibly dating back months or even years. One of the scenarios in which Exchange’s retention features are limited is when an entire PST file is deleted.

Mail archiving features (journaling) enable companies to keep a record of electronic communications (including emails) for a longer specified period (usually 3-7 years). These solutions have very specific requirements like

·         Quick searchability of archive based on the content and metadata

·         Ensuring that all the content has been captured

·         Audit trails for access of the data

·         Retention & Expiration

And so on

Microsoft Exchange’s Hosted Archive Services is one such offering. Microsoft Gold or Certified partners may also provide similar solutions. These offerings/solutions, however, can be expensive particularly if you do not have such specific requirements.

Recovering an Exchange Mailbox

Irrespective of the backup solution, the procedure to recover a mailbox outside the retention period is the same. The most effective solution to backup Exchange data would consist of the following steps:

1.     Take point-in-time snapshots of the Exchange database

2.     Store them on a tape or disk. Tape is the preferred media to store data over long periods of time.

The process to retrieve this data would be as follows:

1.     Recover the recovery point to disk from the tape on which it is stored

2.     Mount the required point-in-time snapshot of the Exchange database using the Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant (ExTRA)

3.     Retrieve the required set of emails or mailboxes using the Recovery Storage Group (RSG).

Using the RSG is the only Exchange-supported way to recover mailboxes from database backups. Exchange does not support solutions that reverse engineer mailbox database schema. Using any solution that reverse engineers the database schema can result in data corruption.

Note: Click here to learn more about Microsoft support policy for third-party products that modify or extract Exchange database contents

 

An effective backup and retrieval solution should

System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2007

Allow search for point-in-time snapshot based on parameters like alias, display name, date range, etc.

Allows you to search for mailboxes based on various parameters, thus allow you to zero-in on the tape and snapshot that you are looking for.

Maintain a list of mailboxes that are part of the database at the time of taking the snapshot. As mailbox backups can go back many years, tracking a mailbox can be a difficult process. As many organizations have policies to move mailboxes for load balancing, finding a right point-in-time can be challenging.

Tracks the mailboxes that were the part of the database at the time of the backup. DPM also returns a list of adjacent snapshots so you can fall back on a closer snapshot in case the snapshot you need cannot be used for some reason.

Maintain location of the point-in-time snapshots of the database.

Provides a media-tracking feature that returns the exact tape label and barcode of the media on which the snapshot is stored.

Maintain version of Microsoft Exchange and information about all service packs on the server at the time when the snapshot was taken.

Tracks this information for you and presents it during mailbox recovery.

 

DPM follows the Exchange-supported process for backup and retrieval of an Exchange database to keep track of the information required to facilitate a smooth retrieval of data.

DPM performs Eseutil consistency checks on the data written to disk or tape to ensure that the backup is not corrupt and that it will be readable when required.

Summary

Backup and recovery of emails and mailboxes is an important requirement in today’s digital age. While Exchange provides effective tools to recover data lost by accidental deletions, long term backups are not provided for within Exchange. DPM is an effective solution to backup and restore Exchange data. DPM provides features like mailbox cataloging, recovery point search and consistency checks to provide a smooth and surprise-free backup and recovery experience.

Related Reading

How to recover items that have been hard deleted in Outlook

How to Recover a Deleted Mailbox in Exchange

How to Configure Deleted Item Retention for a User

How to Configure Deleted Mailbox Retention

How to Recover Data for Exchange-Based Servers using DPM 2007

 Harsh Mittal

DPM Engineering talks about the updates to DPM 2007

As part of equipping you around the new features provided in the Q2 rollup update for DPM 2007, the product team will be hosting a live chat session where you can ask your questions related to DPM 2007, the rollup, the upcoming SP1, or even provide suggestions for what you need to either deploy DPM 2007 or would like to see in DPM v3.  Please join us for this collaborative and informational session.

Join us on the day of the chat: 

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

9:00 A.M. - 10:00 A.M. Pacific Time

10:00 P.M. - 11:00 P.M. Mountain Time

16:00 - 17:00 GMT

Join the chat room on the day of the chat:

TechNet: www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx

 

Today, DPM 2007 was awarded silver in the Storage Management category for this year's awards.

Criteria:

The winners were chosen by a select group of solution providers, and their picks reveal what the channel values most. Value. Support. Profit potential. The winner's list-- broken into five categories: Business Software, Security, Utility Software and Systems, Clients and Peripherals, Networking and Storage--serves as a roadmap for products that should be on every VAR’s roster.    .

eWeek's Methodology

To ensure that our awards are not only fair and just, but that they are compiled with the strictest of criteria and reflect real channel opinion, we chose a select list of VARs--from very large to SMBs and those selling a range of solutions and vendors--and contacted them to participate in an e-mail voting system. This controlled research allowed us to monitor and ensure the quality of our awards. 

Each participant was asked to rate the products from 0-10.  Products were scored, based on each voter's responses, from 0 to 10 as follows:

· 1 point: level of familiarity with product

· 3 points: profit potential of product

· 2-1/2 points: opportunity for aftermarket sales related to product

· 1-1/2 points: impact of product on the technology market as a whole

· 2 points: service/support level from vendor for product

We also weighted responses by level of familiarity with the product, so that votes counted more if they were from voters more familiar with the product.  

A special and sincere thanks to all of the Microsoft partners who voted for DPM. 

-- Jason