Questions[scdpm](server)

I have a DPM 2012 server (but I've heard the same behaviour happens with DPM 2010) I'm using to backup my environment; it's connected to a single tape drive (no library), so tape rotation is manual.

My backup schedule is:

• Disk backups everyday at 20:00
• Tape backups everyday at 23:00
• Tape retention 1 week

When I inspect a tape after a successful backup, DPM correctly say all recovery points on the tape are going to expire at backup day + 7 days, at (about) 20:00.

The problem is, after 7 days, when that tape is put back into the drive, DPM complains about not having a free tape to use. At 23:00, when it starts the new tape backups. When the old ones on that tape should already have expired three hours before.

The tape backups can instead be completed successfully on the same tape the next day.

To recap:

• A tape contains some backups; when inspecting the tape, DPM says they are configured to expire the same day at 20:00.
• At 23:00 DPM can't use the tape because it says it's not free.
• The next day, backups on that same tape are successful.

Is this some sort of bug, or am I missing something here?
Do by chance DPM tapes expire on a daily basis, instead of at a given time in the day?

Data Protection Manager 2010 has allocated 100% of our storage pool. We currently have all our protection groups set to 'automatically grow the volumes' [checkbox].

As we were trying to add a backup member (a network folder), we received the following error :

"There is insufficient free space in the storage pool for this protection group. To increase the free space, cancel this wizard and add disks to the storage pool or remove non-DPM volumes from the disks in the storage pool. To assign custom volums to select members, click Modify."

As you can see, the actual disk used is about 5.3TB, but DPM has allocated 99% of the storage pool. Where do we go from here?

• Will we have to recreate our protection groups without the 'auto grow' option?
• Is there a hybrid method between auto/manual disk allocation?
• Is there a method for controlling disk allocation?

Ok, We are ready to deploy our first Hyper-V server with 3 VMs. Just wanted to get other peoples thoughts on Microsoft SCVMM. Do we really need it with only 1 host server? It seems like a good option if you have more than 1 hyper-v host. Are many people using it with only 1 hyper-v host server?

Also, can it be installed on the Hyper-v host? Or does it require it's own server? What about the Microsoft Data Protection Manager. Are there any real benefits to using these tools with 1 host server? Can they be installed on the host server?

Thank you for all you help.

I was backuping data on an 1Gb hard drive with DPM 2010. This disk died but I replace it with another 1Gb hard drive.

But I don't find how to recreate data structure on this new drive from previous protection group.

Protection group were red. I delete the disk in "administration > disks", now protection group are green but they don't save data and I can't see any menu to change the disk destination.

how to do ?

thanks

I'm talking about a dataset containing hundreds of DBF-format data files in a shared location, some or all of which may be open or locked by multiple network users, and Microsoft's Data Protection Manager replicating every two hours.

Can the 'snapshots' in this situation be relied upon ?