Restore DPM DB from Azure Backup Vault

Recently a company contacted me and needed help to restore a failed DPM server. The challenge in the restore was to recover their DPM database as it was protected via Online Protection by the failed DPM-server.

This blogpost will cover how you restore the DPM DB from an Azure Backup Vault when the DPM-server protecting the database has failed.

Prerequisites

·         A clean installation of DPM 2012 R2 with a local SQL 2012-instance on a Windows Server 2012 R2 with the same computer name as the failed DPM-server.

·         The storage connected to the new server as the failed DPM-server had.

·         The Azure encryption passphrase for the failed DPM-server.

Restore the DPM DB from Windows Azure

1.     Log into your Azure Portal: https://manage.windowsazure.com

2.     In the Azure Portal, navigate to Recovery Services – “Your Backup Vault-name”.

3.     Download the Microsoft Azure Recovery Service (MARS)-agent.

4.     From the same page, download the Vault credentials to your Backup Vault.

5.     Install the MARS-agent with your preferred settings on a machine not running DPM.

6.     Open Microsoft Azure Backup that you just installed.

7.     In the right table, press “Recover Data”.

8.     On the Getting Started page choose “Another server” and specify your Vault Credentials.

9.     Select the failed DPM-server and press ext.

10.  Choose “Browse for files” and press next.

11.  Select the volume and choose date and time from which you want to recover, press next.

12.  In the “Available items:” window, select the root-folder and press next.

13.  Choose the path to where you want to recover and keep the other settings as default.

14.  Specify the same passphrase as you had configured on the failed DPM-server and click Recover.

Restore and synchronize the DPM database

1.     Make sure the restored DPM-database is placed on your newly installed DPM-server.

2.     Stop the SQL-Agent service and all DPM-services on the new DPM-server:

·         DPM

·         DPM AccessManager Service

·         DPM Writer

·         DPM RA

3.     Open SQL Server Management Studio and detach the new/empty DPM-database.

4.     Right-click “Databases” in the SQL-instance and choose “Attach…”

5.     Click “Add…” then browse to your restored DPM-database and click OK twice.

6.     Start the SQL-Agent service and all DPM-services.

7.     Open the DPM Management Shell and run:

DpmSync –sync

8.     After you have run the DPMSync –sync command, you must perform a consistency check for all data sources from the DPM-console.

Your DPM-server should now be in a functional state!

//Markus