Hi guys,

We have a customer with Veritas Backup Exec 10. They want to replace it with 
DPM but they found some problems related to DPM functioning in the actual 
backup infrastructure (bellow) and actually they are unhappy with the product 
(DPM 2007 with SP1)

Current situation: they have 1 Veritas backup server and other 4 file 
servers with a Veritas Backup Exec “ light server” installed -  all servers 
connected to a Fiber Channel Switch together with a SAN storage device.
The first backup server is managing the jobs on the other 4 “light”servers – 
and all 5 backup servers are writing the backup data directly through the FC 
switch  into the SAN.  The customer wants to make full backup weekly and on 
those 4 file servers there are more than 40 TB of data. They don’t want to 
send data to the first backup server and they want that all servers to write 
DIRECTLY into the SAN.

1)You can use DPM 2007 SP1 or DPM 2010 in such architecture? So installing a 
first DPM server and install other 4 DPM servers on those 4 file servers – 
and managing the jobs on the first DPM server for all the other servers and 
all servers to backup  and write data directly into the SAN through the FC 
switch?
Of course on other servers they will install normal DPM client (agent) but 
on those 4  servers  they want to use DPM servers in the same architecture 
that they have and use with Veritas product.

2)They have tested DPM 2007 and to the DPM server there are connected two 
Fiber Channel cards – in this case the DPM console cannot see the robotic 
library that  they use. When they disconnect a FC card everything is OK; 
there is some workaround or response for this problem?

3)Also they found some differences regarding DPM and Veritas Backup Exec
-              The way to work with tape library and tape management 
(informations abou useful informations on the tape, tape written 
successfully, where is restore test log, from where he knows about corrupted 
tape, if he has different jobs with different tape sets how he can made the 
split)
-              Job schedule (only at fixed hour), cannot stop delete tape 
job, audit of jobs
-              The media sets concept as in Veritas…how can we do this with 
DPM
-              DPM cannot do: Holding a job, or prioritizing a job 
-              DPM cannot do a backup of a volume shared in Hyper-V;also 
they said that they cannot backup Hyper-v and VM’s unless they install an 
agent in each virtual machine.

Help us with some hints please.

Thank you,

Please find the answers for some of the questions raised.

Thanks,
Praveen D [MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"anonymous" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message 
news:15D87BDC-576A-49E6-8117-1DDFD95E7C23@microsoft.com...
> Hi guys,
>
> We have a customer with Veritas Backup Exec 10. They want to replace it 
> with
> DPM but they found some problems related to DPM functioning in the actual
> backup infrastructure (bellow) and actually they are unhappy with the 
> product
> (DPM 2007 with SP1)
>
> Current situation: they have 1 Veritas backup server and other 4 file
> servers with a Veritas Backup Exec “ light server” installed -  all 
> servers
> connected to a Fiber Channel Switch together with a SAN storage device.
> The first backup server is managing the jobs on the other 4 “light”ervers –
> and all 5 backup servers are writing the backup data directly through the 
> FC
> switch  into the SAN.  The customer wants to make full backup weekly and 
> on
> those 4 file servers there are more than 40 TB of data. They don’t want to
> send data to the first backup server and they want that all servers to 
> write
> DIRECTLY into the SAN.
>
> 1)You can use DPM 2007 SP1 or DPM 2010 in such architecture? So installing 
> a
> first DPM server and install other 4 DPM servers on those 4 file servers –
> and managing the jobs on the first DPM server for all the other servers 
> and
> all servers to backup  and write data directly into the SAN through the FC
> switch?
> Of course on other servers they will install normal DPM client (agent) but
> on those 4  servers  they want to use DPM servers in the same architecture
> that they have and use with Veritas product.

You can use DPM 2010 to backup its own data to the locally available disks. 
One more thing here is to manage DPM one should connect to the DPM server 
remotely, as there is no way to manage DPM from a different machine apart 
from powershell scipting interface.
>
> 2)They have tested DPM 2007 and to the DPM server there are connected two
> Fiber Channel cards – in this case the DPM console cannot see the robotic
> library that  they use. When they disconnect a FC card everything is OK;
> there is some workaround or response for this problem?

Please find the DPM tested tape libraries. 
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/dpm/cc678583.aspx.
>
> 3)Also they found some differences regarding DPM and Veritas Backup Exec
> -              The way to work with tape library and tape management
> (informations abou useful informations on the tape, tape written
> successfully, where is restore test log, from where he knows about 
> corrupted
> tape, if he has different jobs with different tape sets how he can made 
> the
> split)
> -              Job schedule (only at fixed hour), cannot stop delete tape
> job, audit of jobs

Cancelling a job is available, and one month of job results will be 
available at any time for knowing the job status.

> -              The media sets concept as in Veritas…how can we do this 
> with
> DPM
> -              DPM cannot do: Holding a job, or prioritizing a job
> -              DPM cannot do a backup of a volume shared in Hyper-V;also
> they said that they cannot backup Hyper-v and VM’s unless they install an
> agent in each virtual machine.

Backing up the entire virtual machines by installing the agent alone on 
Hyper-V is possible but recovery directly to the Virtual machine is not 
possible. Also if VM's individual data sources need to be protected then 
agent need to be installed on each VM.

>
> Help us with some hints please.
>
> Thank you,
>