All

I don't quite fully understand the DPM Parallel Backup feature and am struggling to set this up. In a lab environment, I have DPM setup on one virtual server with 2 separate iSCSI disks on 2 separate external devices (file servers) attached and online. Agents are deployed to 3 virtual machines I am backing up on the server and they are successfully backing up using DPM. What I am struggling with is getting DPM to perform Parallel backups so that the same data is backed up to both disks. That way one of the iSCSI disks can be located in another site (still on network via site to site vpn) and hopefully I can set network throttling etc. across the WAN during peak times.

I have also looked at manually replicating data between the iSCSI disks but the nature of how DPM splits the disk up makes this seem wrong. I have also looked at 3rd party software to act as a virtual tape library but want to avoid using any other product but Microsoft. There can be Azure backups running at the same time, but the cost is prohibitive when backing up full VM machines and unnecessary when clients have more than 1 site that can be used for alternative off site backup location. I have also thought about Server 2012 replication but this will generate a lot of traffic over the WAN (every 15 mins). The goal here is to have another site only used for DR situations and hold full DPM backups of machine snapshots. Hope that makes sense?

Has anyone got advice or deployment walk through for this as that would be great :-)

Ste

Hi,

I do not understand what you mean by the term "DPM Parallel Backup feature". DPM does not have any feature like that. DPM will use all the disks in the DPM storage pool when disk protection is enabled in a protection group.  As noted DPM will spread the volumes around on separate disks so performance is better, but you cannot remove a disk from the storage pool until all data sources using is are removed from protection and replica's deleted.

You can use DPMBACKUP -REPLICAS and robocopy to copy the DPM replica to another set of disks if you want to maintain offsite copy of your protected data.  See this forum post for the basics.

Alternately - you can set up secondary protection using a secondary DPM Server offs

Parallel Backups

DPM triggers 3 jobs at a time to any node by default. This per node number can be changed by changing the registry key Microsoft Hyper-V (which is a DWORD value and set the appropriate value) located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\2.0\Configuration\MaxAllowedParallelBackups. Also, a node by default configured to do 8 backup jobs at any given time. This means that if there is a 64 node cluster protected by 5 DPM servers, each node can still honor 8 job parallel requests in total that can come from all or some of DPM servers.

DPM: How to plan for protecting VMs in private cloud deployments

Hyper-V Protection with Data Protection Manager

parallel backup support

Running Parallel Backups

Thanks guys, that seems clearer.

So if I have two sites separated by a WAN with the main site hosting 6 Virtual Machines, what is the best way to protect the network?

Scenario: Server 2008 R2 HyperV 2 node Cluster with SAN running 6 VM's at Site 1. Server 2012 at site 2 running ADDS and HyperV but no VM's. Both sites have iSCSI NAS for Backup purposes.

I want to ensure the 6 VM's at the main site are backed up at both sites, therefore if the main site goes down, the VM's can be restored and ran on the HyperV role on Server 2 at site 2

How would I plan this?

Ste

You can use Secondary DPM at Site2 or upgrade Host server to Windows Server 2012 (R2) and use Hyper-V Replica.

Would I just need to upgrade the Host Server running DPM to Server 2012 R2 at the main site in order to configure replication of the VM's to Site 2?

Concerned that it may generate too much network traffic as replication occurs every 15 mins

If the main site went down, how long would you expect DPM at site 2 takes to recover a full VM (60GB) to the HyperV role on the Server and get the company running again?

Thanks

Would I just need to upgrade the Host Server running DPM to Server 2012 R2 at the main site in order to configure replication of the VM's to Site 2?

You may use version 2012 or 2012 R2 (preferably).

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Concerned that it may generate too much network traffic as replication occurs every 15 mins

replication traffic is just small because transfered only change block VHD.

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If the main site went down, how long would you expect DPM at site 2 takes to recover a full VM (60GB) to the HyperV role on the Server and get the company running again?

1) For Hyper-V replica manual switching - 2 minutes

2) for restore VM from secondary DPM to Hyper-V host site2 - depends on the transmission bandwidth site 2 (local network)

 and get the company running again?

Thanks

Sorry I meant if we lost all hardware and the 6 VM's at Site 1 due to fire etc., how long would it take to start these up on the Server at Site 2 running HyperV based on an average of 60GB data per server, and allow the company to carry on as normal again.

For DPM at site 2, the server would be the attached and backing up to iSCSI NAS like site 1

Seems like HyperV replication of the 6 VM's to Site 2 would be the quickest?

Regards

Sorry I meant if we lost all hardware and the 6 VM's at Site 1 due to fire etc., how long would it take to start these up on the Server at Site 2 running HyperV based on an average of 60GB data per server, and allow the company to carry on as normal again.

For DPM at site 2, the server would be the attached and backing up to iSCSI NAS like site 1

Seems like HyperV replication of the 6 VM's to Site 2 would be the quickest?

Regards

If you will use Hyper-V replica from site 1 to site 2 that 2 minutes + time start VM (10 minute). Total 15 - 25 minutes.

Secondary DPM must have OWN storage (DAS, iSCSI NAS) at site 2.

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Seems like HyperV replication of the 6 VM's to Site 2 would be the quickest?

Yes.

Sounds like the replication option is the way forward for a complete Disaster Recovery situation

Thanks, I will start to implement this :-)

Ste

Hi Eugene,

The DPM parallel backup the customer was wanting was parallelism at the disk storage level - DPM has no option to keep (parallel) multiple copies of disk based backups.  The links you supplied are all default settings and nothing special needs to be configured on the DPM server.