The Latest in the System Center Family of Products
At this mornings keynote address at the Venician Hotel in Las Vegas, Microsoft President of Software and Tools, Bob Muglia, formally announced Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 and System Center Service Manager (SCSM) 2010.
These technologies have been in development for years and are major components in the System Center family of products!
DATA PROTECTION MANAGER 2010System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 is the 3rd or 4th generation “backup” product from Microsoft. DPM backs up Microsoft servers and applications using the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) where data is extracted off servers and applications real time and stored on digital media.
Effectively, instead of waiting until 1am to do a streaming backup of an Exchange, SQL, SharePoint or other server, DPM snapshots data every 15 minutes allowing for backups to happen all day long. In the event of a server failure, DPM has multiple copies of the live data available for recovery, so instead of losing a day of work (or doing a nightly restoral and recovering logs from a day of operations), DPM has a full set of data available for recovery that is no more than 15 minutes old.
Additionally, DPM, because it is a Microsoft technology, understands how to recovery just data files from a backup, so an organization backing up SharePoint 2010 or a File Server can specifically identify a single SharePoint post or document in a library, or a specific file or folder in a file system for recovery. AND, for file system recovery, users (with granted privileges) can reach into a DPM backup and self-recover files that have been accidentally deleted or overwritten.
Self-service recovery DRASTICALLY improves recovery time and support efforts of IT!
- The latest DPM 2010 has the following capabilities:
- Backup/recovery of Exchange 2010, 2007, 2003
- Backup/recovery of SharePoint 2010, 2007, 2003
- Backup/recovery of SQL 2008, 2005
- Backup/recovery of Windows filesystem and Active Directory
- Backup/recovery of Hyper-V host servers and guest sessions
- Backup/recovery of Windows 7 client systems
- Backup/recovery of Windows 7 client systems over a remote DirectAccess WAN connection
- Backup/recovery of DPM data into the cloud, so data is first stored on the local DPM server, and selected data can be pushed to the cloud eliminating the need for data tapes
- and more…
Being on the beta program for DPM 2010 for the past 18-months, we have impleemnted all of these capabilities of DPM 2010 in full blown production environments and found the capability GREATLY improves an IT organizations ability to backup, recover, and manage data.
SYSTEM CENTER SERVICE MANAGER 2010
System Center Service Manager 2010 is Microsoft’s helpdesk / incident management / change control product. We were REALLY glad to hear Bob Muglia announce SCSM this morning! We have been on the System Center Service Manager early adopter program for years, implementing the solution in production environments, and integrating it with Active Directory, System Center Operations Manager, and System Center Configuration Manager.
SCSM now allows us to centralize process, incidents, and problem resolution. With Microsoft’s acquisition of Opalis, we have been able to fully automate processes and controls so that we can help organizations comply with laws and regulations around reporting, systems management, security controls, and information exchange.
I have been blogging all month on System Center products include Service Manager 2010 and Data Protection Manager 2010, more postings up on http://www.networkworld.com/community/morimoto
I also cover these technologies and more in my just released book “System Center Enterprise Suite Unleashed”, a 1000-page book from Sams Publishing.
