New Data Protection Manager in Beta

A public beta of the second version of Data Protection Manager (DPM), a server-based product designed to perform frequent disk-based backup of other Windows servers, was made available in late September. Planned for release to manufacturing in the second half of 2007, the new version adds many enhancements, including the ability to backup SQL Server, Exchange, and SharePoint data stores without ever taking them off line. These features will substantially expand the scope of the product, which currently is practical mainly for file servers.

Disk-Based Backup for Fast Recovery

A DPM system consists of a Windows Server 2003 computer running the DPM software and equipped with a large amount of disk storage, plus DPM agents running on each Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 production server it protects. The agents monitor and copy changes on the production servers and periodically replicate changed data to the DPM server, which stores the data in a large disk-based repository. Tape backups for off-site storage and archiving can be made from the DPM server. If data on a production server is corrupted or lost due to user error or system failure, it can be restored more rapidly and reliably than if extracted from tape, and in many cases without the intervention of IT staff. Furthermore, DPM supports a choice of which version of a file to recover; the data restored can be anywhere from 15 minutes to a month old, depending on system configuration. (According to Microsoft’s research, nearly 90% of tape-restore requests submitted to IT are for data less than 30 days old.)