Things to Consider When Protecting SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, and File
The following are best practices in protecting applications using DPM 2010
► A computer that is protected by DPM can have multiple protection groups protecting data sources. However, all these protection groups must be from one DPM server.
► When protecting data in a DFS namespace, use DPM to only protect a single “copy” of the data located on a server-specific local path.
► Do not use DPM to protect a cluster’s quorum disk.
► Because System State data tends not to change very often, System State backups should be placed in their own protection groups.
► Always ensure that the Eseutil.exe and ese.dll versions on the DPM server are from the most recent edition of Exchange Server.
► Exchange Server databases should not be configured to use circular logging when being protected by DPM.
► After recovering an Exchange database that is in a DAG, the passive copies need to be synchronized with the recovered active database using the Resume-MailboxDatabaseCopy cmdlet.
► Before you can start protecting data on a SQL Server 2005 SP1 instance, you must first enable and then start the SQL Server VSS Writer Service.
► When protecting a SQL Server cluster, all nodes of the cluster should have the DPM protection agent installed on them.
► When using DPM 2010, you can choose to protect an entire SQL Server instance, and all new databases added to that instance will be automatically protected.
► When you recover a SQL database to its original instance of SQL Server, the original database is overwritten using the replica that was chosen to recover the database with. If you are trying to attempt a lossless recovery, you then need to restore the database using the latest recovery point, and have DPM replay any residual live transactions from the SQL Server log files (LDF).
► The SQL End User Recovery feature uses TCP port 11313 to communicate to the DPM server. To use this feature, you need to ensure that Windows Firewall has been configured to allow incoming connections on this port.
► WFE servers do not host content. Therefore, technically only one Web Front End server needs to have the protection agent installed in a SharePoint farm.
► The ConfigureSharePoint.exe utility can also be used to enable protection for Search and configure a temp folder location for recoveries by using the Ena-bleSPSearchProtection and SetTempPath parameters.
► After completing a content database recovery operation, be sure to detach and reattach the database using the Central Administration website to force an update to the sitemap table in the SharePoint farm configuration database.
► To perform an item-level restore without the use of a recovery farm is only possible with a SharePoint 2010 farm.
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
