Unable to configure protection for Vmware VMs

Hi,

Today I ran into a problem while configuring protection for a VMware virtual machine. I've previously successfully protected VMs on the same cluster and datstoreso I draw the conclusion it was the VM itself that was causing the issue.

Error: In the DPM-console I had the following error which clearly states why the configure protection job failed: The VM has one or several snapshots.

Resolution: I contacted the person who had created the snapshot and asked if it was OK for me to delete that snapshot. Then I logged onto the vSphere-console and deleted the snapshot. After that the configure protection-job completed successfully and the Replica creation could begin.

Conclusion: Before you start adding protection for your VMware VMs. Make sure you are not having an unsupported scenario as DPM VMware protection does not support the following scenarios:

1. Raw Device Mapping (RDM) pass thru disks can be configured in either physical compatibility mode or virtual compatibility mode. Physical RDM (PRDM) is not supported, however Virtual RDM (VRDM) is supported.
   
2. Clustered VMs are supported, however VMs hosted on shared disk clusters are not supported. Change tracking on shared disks is not supported by VMware.
   
3. DPM cannot detect or protect VApps.
   
4. DPM currently cannot protect VMware VMs to tape or a secondary DPM server.
   
5. Manual replica creation is not supported. You must either let DPM create the initial replica at the time of protection or schedule it to run later.
   
6. DPM can protect VMs with snapshots, however the snapshots are not backed up and are not restored during a VM recovery. If the snapshot was created before protection, DPM cannot protect that VM because VMware does not support enabling change tracking for any VM that has existing snapshots. A work around is to delete the existing snapshots.
   
7. The Microsoft Operations Manager console does not currently support monitoring VMware data sources, however they will show up under the All Datasources view. VMware protection alerts will only show under All Alerts. You can modify the OpsMgr management pack (MP) by making a custom view and overriding the DPM MP.

Kind Regards

Markus Eliasson

Update Rollup 11: Protect VMware VMs with DPM!

Hi,

Microsoft just released Update Rollup 11 for DPM and today is the day many of us has been waiting for: Support for backup and restore of VMware virtual machines at vCenter/ESXi-level!

Here is some other highlights of VMware VM backup with DPM:

• Agentless backup
• Backup at vCenter or ESXi level
• Backup VMware VM folders
• Ability to do ILR
• Protect large data center using DPM Scale Out
•  Backup to Disk/Cloud

Want to start testing the new features right away?

1. Go the Microsoft Update Catalog and download UR11 (Remeber: No restart needed for production-agents if you are UR6 or above!) :
   http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/search.aspx?q=3162908
2. Have a look at the 2½min video that provides value prop and overview of VMware VM backup: Announcing VMware VM Backup using System Center Data Protection Manager
3. Check out this guide on how to configure backup of VMware VMs in four steps:
   Four simple steps to backup VMware VMs using SC DPM

Kind Regards
Markus Eliasson

Update Rollup 10 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager Released!

Hi folks,

Update Rollup 10 has been released and even if we did not got any new features in this UR, Microsoft provides us with a great deal of fixes for known issues!

Remember that if you are running Update Rollup 6 or later, there will be no requirement for restarting your production servers when you upgrade the DPM-agents to UR 10!

Update Rollup 10 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

Kind Regards
Markus Eliasson

Recover data to another DPM-server from Azure backup vault

Here is a quick guide on how to recover data from an Azure Backup Vault. This scenario can be leveraged when a DPM-server has failed and you need to recover the data it has backed up.

Requirements

• System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 with UR7 or later installed
• The latest Azure Backup Agent (Download link)

Step by Step

1. From the Recovery tab of the DPM management console, click 'Add External DPM' (at the top left of the screen).
2. Download new vault credentials from the vault associated with the DPM server where the data is being recovered, choose the DPM server from the list of DPM servers registered with the backup vault, and provide the encryption passphrase associated with the DPM server whose data is being recovered.
   
   (Note:Only DPM servers associated with the same registration vault can recover each other’s data.)
    
3. Once the External DPM server is successfully added, you can browse the data of external DPM server and local DPM server from the Recovery tab.
4. Browse the available list of production servers protected by the external DPM server and select the appropriate data source.
5. Select the date from the Recovery points drop down and select the Recovery time.
6. A list of files and folders will appear in the bottom pane which can be browsed and recovered to any location.
7. Right click the appropriate item and click Recover.
8. Go thourght the Recovery Wizard and start recovering.

When you are done you can click Clear External DPM on the Recovery tab of the DPM server to remove the view of the external DPM server.

Kind Regards
Markus Eliasson

Backup Exchange 2016 with DPM 2012 R2

Hi,

Today Microsoft updated the support matrix for DPM and we are happy to see that from Update Rollup 9 you are able to configure protection for Exchange 2016:
DPM protection support matrix

DPM can backup following Exchange configurations:

 1. Standalone Exchange Server.

 2. Exchange DAG, including both the configurations:
     * IP based DAG
     * IP-less DAG (DAG without a cluster administrative Access Point)

Note: DPM currently support Exchange 2016 on NTFS data volumes. We are working on adding support for REFS data volumes and will be added in later update

Regards
Markus Eliasson

Troubleshoot DPM Service unable to start, unable to remove agents and 9xx-errors in the Event Viewer

Hi,

Quick post on one thing to check if you are expericening the following symtoms/issues on a DPM-server:

• DPM AccessManager Service not starting 
• DPM Accessmanager Service fails to start
• DPM service not starting or having trouble restarting
• Msdpm cannot be found
• Unable to remove agents
• Various 9xx errors in the event viewer

Resolution:

*** Important! Always create a backup of the DPM-database before doing any changes! ***

1. Open SQL Management Studio on the dpm server and connect to the instance of your DPM sql engine
2. Go to DPMDatabase (in my case: DPMDB_2012) > Tables > dbo.tbl_DLS_GlobalSetting
3. Choose "Edit the top 200 rows" of that table and you will find a property called: DBRecovery
4. The value should be 0, sometimes while doing dpmsyncs and other attempted repairs to dpm, this will be set to 1 and never change back to 0. 

I hope this will help someone with their troubleshooting!

//Markus

Monitor DPM Storage Pool

Hi,

I've created a small PowerShell-script that is ready to be used as a Performance Rule in System Center Operations Manager to monitor the amount of freespace in the storage pool on your DPM-server.

I will post a complete guide later on how to create the rule in SCOM!

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

#Load the MOMScript API and the PropertBag provider
$API = New-Object -comObject "MOM.ScriptAPI"
$bag = $api.CreatePropertyBag()

#Log an event at script-start
$api.LogScriptEvent("FreeDiskSpace.ps1",3280,0,"Collect FreeSpace in DPM-storagepool Script is starting")

#Main PowerShell-script
$FS = get-dpmdisk | where {$_.DiskTypeLabel -ne "Basic"} | Select UnallocatedSpaceLabel | ft -HideTableHeaders| Out-String -Stream
$FS = $FS | ForEach-Object {$_ -replace "GB", ""} 
$FreeSpace = ($FS | Measure-Object -Sum | select sum | ft -HideTableHeaders | Out-String).trim()

$TS = get-dpmdisk | where {$_.DiskTypeLabel -ne "Basic"} | Select TotalCapacityLabel | ft -HideTableHeaders| Out-String -Stream
$TS = $TS | ForEach-Object {$_ -replace "GB", ""} 
$TotalSpace = ($TS | Measure-Object -Sum | select sum | ft -HideTableHeaders | Out-String).trim()

#Add the data into the PropertyBag
$bag.AddValue("FreeSpace",$FreeSpace)
$bag.AddValue("TotalSpace",$TotalSpace)

#Log an event that our script is complete
$api.LogScriptEvent("FreeDiskSpace.ps1",3281,0,"Collect FreeSpace in DPM-storagepool Script is complete.  
$FreeSpace GB of $TotalSpace GB free in diskpool on $env:computername")

#Output the PropertyBag data for SCOM consumption
$bag

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

Kind Regards
Markus Eliasson

Move protected data between DPM-disks: MigrateDatasourceDataFromDPM

Hi everyone,

Here is an example on how I use the MigrateDatasourceDataFromDPM.ps1 when I want to consolidate protected data or just empty one disk in the DPM storage-pool.

The ntdiskid-number in the script is the number you can see in either the get-DPMDisk output, the Windows Disk Management GUI or under Management - Disks in the DPM-console.

In the example below I want to move all data from disk 1 to disk 3,5 and 6:

$source = get-dpmdisk -dpmserver MyDpmServer | where {$_.ntdiskid -eq 1} 

$destination = get-dpmdisk -dpmserver MyDpmServer  | where {3,5,6 -contains $_.ntdiskid} 

MigrateDatasourceDataFromDPM.ps1 -DPMServername MyDpmServer  -source $source -destination $destination

//Markus

Update Rollup 9 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager is now available!

Hi!

Update Rollup 9 has been released and for all the DPM-admin out there. Here is the fix we all have been waiting for:

• No production server restart is required when you upgrade from DPM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 6 or later versions!

"We have performed an extensive review of the DPM architecture to avoid production server restarts when you upgrade the DPM Agent. There were a few cases in which the Agent update was flagging for restart, and these are fixed now. Therefore, if you already upgraded to DPM 2012 R2 Update Rollup 6 or a later version, you will not experience a restart when you upgrade to this update."

There are more features and a lot of fixes that prevent issues in UR9 so go ahead and start upgrading: Update Rollup 9 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager

Have a great Friday and a lovely weekend!

Kind Regards
Markus Eliasson

Setdpmserver, errorcode = 0x80070005, error says: access is denied

Hi,

So today I ran into an interesting problem when installing a DPM-agent on a Domain Controller in another trusted-domain.

The agent-installation completed successfully but when I ran:
   SetDpmserver.exe -dpmservername MyDPMServer.Bucatech.com
In a elevated command prompt I got received the error
   SetDpmServer failed with errorcode = 0x80070005, error says: Access is denied.

My solution, after some hours of troubleshooting, was to run a Enter-PsSession to the production server, from the DPM-server in my Bucatech.com-domain:

   Enter-PSSession ProdServer.Contoso.com -Credential Contoso\DomainAdminUser

*fill in my password in the authentication-box*

   CD 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\bin'

   .\SetDPMServer.exe -dpmservername MyDPMServer.Bucatech.com

I hope this can help anyone of you!

Kind Regards
Markus Eliasson

What's coming for System Center in 2016?

Hi everyone,

Just a quick post to update you on what new features we can expect to see in DPM 2016:

• Protect mixed mode clusters
• New form of change tracking to replace VSS snapshot-based backups - Resilient Change Tracking (RCT)
• Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) support
• Virtual TPM support for protection of Shielded VMs

How these new features will integrate with VMM 2016 and its new "VM Checkpoint support" ("Production" checkpoints in Server 2016) is going to be very interesting!

Here is a great bloggpost covering all System Center products:

What's coming for System Center in 2016?

Best Regards

Markus Eliasson

Microsoft recommends installing Update Rollup 8 to improve stability

Hi everyone!

Its now 2016 and we have got a whole new year of exciting new features and releases in front of us, but lets focus on our current situation for a moment.

Update Rollup 8 for DPM 2012 R2 has been out almost two months now and if you haven't already upgraded now is the time. Microsoft has received good feedback from thousands of customers and have decided to make the UR8 marked as "Important Update" on Microsoft Update. 

Here is a complete list of important issues that has been fixed since DPM UR7:

• DPM console crash issues.
• If you try to back up a SharePoint site that uses SQL Always On as a content database, SQL logs are not truncated resulting in SQL disks to become full.
• If you have multiple SharePoint farms hosted on the same SQL cluster, with different instances but the same database names, DPM cannot back up the correct SharePoint farm content.
• You try to back up Hyper-V virtual machines (VM) that have a replica and both the Active virtual machine and the Replica virtual machine are managed by the same System Center VMM server. Previously, you had no control to select between Active and Replica virtual machines for backup. This frequently caused backups to fail, depending on the setup.
• If you try to protect large number of virtual machines in a single Protection Group, and you have the VMM Helper Service enabled, some backups may fail with "System.TimeoutException".
• In some cases, alerts that are resolved in DPM are not synced in the DPM Central Console.
• If you are trying to recover data from an imported tape, DPM may crash with a "Connection to the DPM service has been lost" error.
• When you try to protect a SQL failover cluster, the Data Protection Manager UI may crash for backup or synchronization operation.
• DPM self-service recovery for SQL databases may fail with the error “Cannot connect to DPM server …”
• End User Recovery/SSRT may not work in some cases for mirrored SQL databases.
• You cannot protect a SQL database on an Availability Group (AG) if different AG have the same database name.

Get UR8 now! = https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3086084

Kind Regards
Markus Eliasson