Things to Consider When Planning your DPM 2010 Implementation
The following are best practices in designing and planning your DPM 2010 rollout:
► Do not install DPM on domain controllers, Exchange servers, or Operations Manager Management or Gateway servers.
► For most enterprise deployments, the recommended protection method is to use disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) or disk-to-disk-to-cloud (D2D2C).
► DPM can be deployed onto a virtual machine. However, when a virtual machine is used, the storage pool must be connected by using pass-through disks or iSCSI.
► Although the DPM Installation Wizard attempts to install prerequisite software, it is always a best practice to understand what requirements need to be met before installing a server application.
► Spend time mapping out your DPM deployment. Failure to fully understand the business requirements and then designing a DPM installation to meet those requirements might result in data loss or worse.
► If you plan to only use tape-based protection, you do not need to plan out the DPM disk storage requirements.
► When creating a storage group and adding members, it is recommended that you plan out the selection of a storage pool or custom volume. These attributes of a data source cannot be modified once it is a member of a storage group.
► For data that is on a system volume, it is recommended that the individual folders or shares be protected instead of the entire volume.
► SharePoint databases cannot be protected as a SQL Server data source. Instead, they should be included as part of a SharePoint protection group.
► A separate individual tape needs to be used for each protection group.
► When planning to encrypt tape data, ensure that the proper encryption certificate has been imported and you are managing the life cycle of that certificate.
► Being able to automate DPM tasks is a very key concept to understand. By using the DPM Management Shell, you can integrate data protection and recovery tasks with the rest of the System Center Enterprise Suite applications.
► If the custom volume is used in a storage network, do not choose to format the volume.
► Protected volumes must be NTFS with a minimal partition size of at least 1GB.
This posting is 1 of a monthlong series of postings on the Microsoft System Center family of products. This is an excerpt from my book “System Center Enterprise Unleashed” with more postings on the System Center family of products up at http://www.networkworld.com/community/morimoto
