Whether you want to protect data at an organization or for personal use, backing up is a must. And DPM provides you with easy-to-use backup capabilities.
The problem is that most users find backing up their DPM Server to be difficult. It may be hard mainly because there’s no step-by-step guide out there for this purpose and it may also be because getting backups done the right way requires some of your tech team’s time and effort.
Ready to set up your first DPM backup? Our article on how to back up the DPM server the right way will help you in easy steps.
Check the time
One of the first things you should do is check the time on all of your machines. Make sure it’s the same time, and that none of them are running at a different time than what’s currently set.
If you want to be extra thorough, check out how long your PC was rebooted or restarted in Hyper-V. You can also use PowerShell to see if there are any errors when attempting to back up using DPM:
Get-VM | Foreach {$_ -replace “Error”, “”}
Stop The DPM Backup Service
You can stop the DPM backup service, the DPM management service, and all of its agents.
To stop the DPM backup service:
- Log in as an administrator on your domain controller (DC).
- Right-click Active Directory Users and Computers or Group Policy Management snap-in and select properties. Under Computer Configuration / Policies / Windows Settings / Security Settings / Local Policies select Audit Policy. In Audit Policy Properties select Logon/Logoff Events for Domain Controllers check box to enable auditing for DCs only; then click OK twice to exit out of this window and return back to your current view where you will see that there is now a red exclamation mark under Permissions required by services running on this computer indicating that there are conflicts between another process running on this computer with one running through another path like “DefaultProfile”
Shutdown all VMs on the Hyper-V Host
To ensure that the VMs are not running during the backup process, you need to shut down all of them.
- Shut down all VMs on the Hyper-V Host. This can be done by clicking Start > Run and entering “shutdown.”
- Change the start type of your volume shadow copy service from automatic to manual. Navigate to Services > Administrative Tools > Services and select Windows Time Service from within this window’s list (see Figure 1). Double-click it in order to open its properties window; then click on Change Startup Type, checkmark “Manual” and click OK (see Figure 2).
This step verifies that all VMs are shut down and Encryption of traffic is completed the right way before beginning any kind of backup operation—which includes creating an image or snapshot of your hosts’ disk contents—and ensures that they don’t interfere with any other processes going on at this time because they’re no longer running when those backups take place
Change the start type of the volume shadow copy service to manual
You can change the start type of the data protection service to manual.
The following steps show how to change the start type:
- Open a command prompt as an administrator and run this command: “wecsvc /o:” -f: where is either DPM or SQL Agent Service, and StartType is either Automatic or Manual. (For example, wecsvc /o:”DPM” -f:”Manual”.)
- The service should start automatically when it gets invoked from a scheduled task or if you manually started it yourself by using its executable file name (e.g., in Windows 10). If not, then check whether it’s running at all by typing this text into CMD window: “netstat -a | findstr LISTENING”. If there are any listening sockets open on port 13545 which are not associated with any running process (other than Microsoft Exchange), then try starting them manually using these commands: net stop MSExchangeReplicationEngineer; net start MSExchangeReplicationEngineer
Modify the start type of SQL Server Agent (MSDPM2012) to manual
Now that you have a working backup plan, the next step is to modify the start type of SQL Server Agent (MSDPM2012) to manual. To do this,
- Open the Services Console and find SQL Server Agent in the list of services.
- Right click on it and select Properties from the menu that appears.
- In the General tab, change Start Type from Automatic to Manual
- Click Apply after making any changes in this section
Finally open the Services Console, and stop the SQL Server Agent (MSDPM2010) service.
Finally, open the Services Console, and stop the SQL Server Agent (MSDPM2010) service.
You will see a window like this:
And then click on Start > Administrative Tools > Services. If you don’t see this option in your Windows 8/10 Control Panel, then click on Start > Settings > System > Apps & features and install it from there. Then go back to Services in Control Panel and access services by clicking on Start Menu icon -> Type Service Manager -> All Programs -> Accessories -> right-click Administrative Tools -> select Run as administrator…
If you follow this guide, your DPM server will be backed up safely and quickly
Now that you know how to back up the DPM server, let’s take a look at some of the most common things people do wrong when backing up their DPM servers.
- They forget to run an image backup job before they start making changes or adding new data protection policies. This is especially important if you have multiple users or groups in your organization who need access to different parts of your network.
- You should be sure that each user has access only when they need it so they don’t accidentally delete something important by accidentally selecting files from another user’s computer instead of theirs when trying out new software updates or patches for example.
- They don’t create an exact copy of their entire system environment including all operating systems installed on every server machine within one physical location (such as an office), since these will vary depending on how many machines are being used during peak hours versus off-peak hours.”
Conclusion
The DPM (Data Protection Manager) is a great tool for managing your data, but it can be very difficult to set up and use.
We’ve covered how to create backups of all the disks that make up your DPM server, tell Windows to back up those disks automatically, and then restore them when needed.
You should also consider using a third-party backup solution such as Acronis True Image or Carbonite if you want more control over how often backups occur or if you want additional features like encryption or file sharing during restore operations (which would otherwise be impossible with normal backup software).