Published: 2011-08-04
Updated: –
Version: 1.0

 

 

Those step-by-steps followed in this article is one way to reach the goal and protect the Exchange databases using DPM 2010.
A guide for Recovering the databases and contents will be provided.

I was posting a recovery guide using DPM 2010 Beta, it can be found here.
But I will in a short while post a new one using DPM 2010 RTM.

 

Prerequisites

DPM installation is successfully completed with all of its requirements.

 

 

Let’s start with checking so that the disk is in placed where we want to keep the backup data.
It should be unallocated like the picture below shows.

 

Start up “DPM 2010 Administrator Console” and go to “Management”, first press “Rescan” so all disks are refreshed.
Then press the “Add” button.

 

Disk 1 will be shows, select the disk and press the “Add” button and “OK”.

 

Here’s the result of adding the disk. It should show up under the Disks tab.

 

Under “Management”, press the tab called “Agents”. Press the “Install…” button.

 

Select the “Install agents” and press Next.

 

Select the Exchange server and press “Add”.

 

The selection is done, press Next.

 

Type in the credentials, it needs to be an account with administrator rights on the specific server. Press Next.

 

I want to have the control over my server so I wish to restart it myself. Press Next.

 

Agent installation process information.. Press Close.

 

The server should appear under the Agents tab in the Console.

 

Select “Protection” in the menu, and press “Create Protection group…”

 

Information window is showed. Press Next.

 

In this case it’s a Server we want to protect, select it and press Next.

 

Expand the Server and select “Exchange 2010 Databases”, then every database is selected. Press Next.

 

Give the Protection group a friendly name, mine is called “Exchange Protection Group”. Press Next.

 

I want to use the feature that DPM check’s the data integrity using eseutil. Press Next.
Ese.dll and Eseutil.exe needs to be copied from the Exchange server and placed into the DPM installation path, in the Bin folder.

 

Press Next. (Since my environment is a single server..)

 

I want to save the backups for 7 days and I want the backup to run every 15min, and a Full Backup everyday at 20.00 (8 PM).
Press Next.

 

Press Next.

 

I want to create my replica right away. If this is a production environment it’s recommended to do this when the load is under the average usage.
Pres Next.

 

I want to run a consistency check on the replicas. Press Next.

 

A summary is shown. Press Create Group.

 

The Replicas is created. Press Close when it’s done.

 

It takes a while before the replicas have been created, that will depend on how large the databases are.

 

After a while the databases should show the status that they are proctected, the status will then be OK.

 

 

I would recommend to explore the Reporting part if you want some kind of reports about the backups.

Exchange is now protected using DPM 2010.

Thanks for reading and feel free to give any kind of feedback regarding the article