SC 2012 SP1 has RTM'd

It’s very exciting to announce that SC 2012 SP1 has RTM’d. There is NO official date yet for public availability but it is targeted for early January.

For you guys who are members of the TAP program for SCDPM 2012 SP1 you are supported to upgrade from BETA. For you who is not a member of the TAP program an upgrade from BETA to RTM is not supported.

All non-TAP customers will be able to upgrade their DPM 2012 installation with some QFE’s preinstalled.

One VERY important note is that there is NO upgrade path from BETA SP1 to SP1. You must reinstall DPM 2012 RTM and afterwards install SP1.

Error when entering the SCOM 2012 License key

In some scenarios the Operations Manager Shell won’t be able to write changes to the registry due to limited rights even if you run the Operations Manager Shell as an administrator.

When entering the SCOM license key you may end up with the following errors:

 

 

To solve this open a PowerShell command prompt running with administrative rights and import the SCOM PowerShell modules.

Use the command Import-Module OperationsManager to be able to run OperationsManager PowerShell CMDLET's.

 

Next use this syntax: Set-SCOMLisence –ProductId XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

 

How to enter SCOM 2012 Licensekey

For those of you who have emailed the question how to enter the license key in SCOM 2012 I decided to write a quick blog post regarding this matter.

Open the System Center Operation Manager Shell with administrative rights and use the Set-SCOMLicense command.

 

Type Set-SCOMLicense –ProductId XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

 

Next you will be prompted with a question asking for permission for the operation. Hit Y followed by hitting Enter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Missing cleaning-tape slot on DELL TL2000

I faced a challenge during a DPM implementation when trying to get a DELL TL2000 tape library to work properly using the cleaning media.

The problem I was facing was that the actual slot for the cleaning tape went missing.

To solve this you must add a registry value to the DPM sever. Add a DWORD named RSMCompatMode under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Agent with the value of 8.

 

 

The RSMCompatMode is used to specify several flags for DPM. The following are the flags that are set by this registry value: 

• 1 = RSM_COMPAT_INIT_ELEMENT_STATUS
• 4 = RSM_COMPAT_IGNORE_TAPE_INVENTORY_RESULT
• 8 = RSM_COMPAT_CLEANER_EXCEPTION

Restart the DPM server after you added the registry key and perform a rescan if the slot doesn’t show up immediately.

 

I tried different drivers from DELL but the driver bundled in the DELL_TL2000-4000_A09_R318494 works.

How to install the Centralized Console for DPM 2012

A new feature that works really well is the centralized console for DPM 2012. This blog post will walk you through the installation of the centralized console and also help you out with the prerequisites for it to work.

To be able to work with the centralized console you must have a SCOM 2012 installation in place. The centralized console will NOT work with SCOM 2007, it must be installed on the actual SCOM server.

The first you must do before you install the centralized console you must prepare the SCOM server or SCOM servers before start the installation. Import the DPM Management Pack that is located on the DPM 2012 media.
If you miss out to import the MP’s you will receive the following error

 

 

Start of by importing the MP’s for DPM 2012 in your SCOM 2012 server by clicking the link Required: Import management packs

 



 

Choose to import the MP’s from disk

 

 

Click on No

 

Go to the catalogue for the MP’s located in the DPM 2012 media  and choose the MP’s

Click on Install

 

Click on Yes

 

 

 

MP’s are now being imported

 

When SCOM has finished importing the DPM 2012 Management Packs you are ready to install the Centralized Console. Go to your SCOM 2012 server and open the DPM 2012 media. Click on DPM Central Console to start the installation.

 

 

Check the check box I accept the… and click on OK

 

Installation starts

 

On the Welcome Screen click on Next

 

Choose to install both server-side and client-side components and click on Next

 

The installation starts

 

When the Prerequisites Check is finished click on Next

 

On the Installation Settings click on Next

 

 

Choose to use Microsoft Update and click on Next

The installation starts

 

When the installation is finished click on Close

 

You will receive an information window regarding SCOM discoveries, click on OK

 

Tape drive cleaning

As many have noticed there is not an automated tape drive cleaning function in DPM 2012 but if you would like to have a scheduled job to run this is easily made with a scheduled PowerShell script.

-------------------------------Begin Script-------------------------------

$DPMLib = Get-DPMLibrary -DPMServerName DPMSERVERNAMEGOESHERE

$td = Get-TapeDrive -DPMLibrary $DPMLib

Start-DPMTapeDriveCleaning -TapeDrive $td

-------------------------------End Script-------------------------------

Copy the PowerShell script and save it to a PS1 file and you are good to go

System Center 2012 RU 3 fix is now available - see KB2751230

Description of Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2756127

Issues that are fixed in Update Rollup 3 for System Center 2012

Update Rollup 3 for System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 (KB2751230)

Issue 1
After you upgrade System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 to System Center Data Protection Manager 2012, the tape management report does not display overdue tapes.

Issue 2
System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 Client Protection does not scale to the limits that are expected.

Issue 3
When you try to specify a client computer name in the DPMServerName attribute by using Windows PowerShell, Windows PowerShell crashes.

Issue 4When the name of a Microsoft SharePoint site collection contains a space, and you perform a SharePoint item-level recovery operation in System Center Data Protection Manager 2012, the operation fails.

Issue 5
After you rename a SharePoint site in System Center Data Protection Manager 2012, you cannot restore the site.

Issue 6
The SharePoint Recovery Point Status Report displays incorrect data in System Center Data Protection Manager 2012.

Issue 7
A bare metal recovery fails in certain situations.

How to migrate data between DPM disks

I received a lot of questions regarding how to migrate data between disks in the storage pool so I decided to write a blog post explaining how you can migrate data from disk A to disk B present in the DPM diskpool. There are also some difference between DPM 2010 and DPM 2012.

There are three different ways of doing this, you can migrate:

1.       Disk to disk
2.       Data source to DPM disk
3.       Data source to custom volume

In this blog post I will cover the first step, migrating from DPM disk to DPM disk.

There are also some different scenarios where this comes in hand. The first obvious is when System Center Operations Manager monitors the disk hardware that is used for the DPM diskpool and you will be receiving alerts that indicates that the hardware is starting to enter a failure state.

The second scenario is when your warranty period is near its end and you need to replace the disk in the DPM diskpool.

In both scenarios you will use the DPM PowerShell and the PS1 called MigrateDatasourceDataFromDPM.PS1.

Open DPM Management Shell present on you desktop or in your start menu:

 

The first step you must do is to collect all the information regarding the present disks in the DPM diskpool for the current DPM server. This is done by typing the following syntax:

$disk = Get-DPMDisk –DPMServerName DPMSERVERNAME

 

You will now have all the disks present in $disk

 

Remember that the value $disk is indexed and you need to start with the value 0 to get the first value of the array. To migrate data from $disk[2] to $disk[0] type the following syntax:

MigrateDatasourceDataFromDPM.ps1 –DPMServerName DPMSERVERNAME –Source $disk[2] –Destination $disk[0]

 

When the script has finished you should go to the Monitor area and use the filter All job’s in progress to monitor the Post-recovery operation job that will run after you have migrated data sources from one disk to another in the DPM diskpool. The migrated disk will automatically be deleted from the DPM GUI.

 

One thing that is important to now is that you are able to migrate your replica volumes directly but the recovery point volumes needs to be timed out on you old hardware. This means that you cannot remove the physical disk before your retention time of the data sources has been timed out by the retention time value present in the protection group configuration.

Every night a maintenance script will run that will update the replica volume with the oldest recovery point volume data. Eventually the old data present in the old recovery point volumes will be timed out and removed; you can then safely remove the physical or virtual hardware.

DPM Survival Guide

If you are looking for some collected resources  regarding DPM you should have a look at the DPM 2012 Survival Guide.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11867.system-center-2012-data-protection-manager-survival-guide-en-us.aspx

 

50 Must-Read IT Blogs 2012

My blog Robertanddpm has received the honorable nomination 50 Must-Read IT Blogs 2012! I sincerely is very grateful for all the people who has voted, thank you very much!

http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article/2012/09/50-must-read-it-blogs-2012
 
Robert =)

SP1 Beta

The BETA for SP1 is now available for you to download.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34607&Loc=zatfz_zTS1z&type=zDLz&prod=zSCz  

Update Rollup 2 KB2706783

The Update Rollup 2 for DPM 2012 is containing 11 important updates:

DOWNLOAD KB2706783 HERE

Issue 1After you upgrade from System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, Microsoft SharePoint backups fail if the SharePoint database has a nondefault collation.

Issue 2

A backup of encrypted files fails silently when the self-signed certificate Group Policy Object is disabled.

Issue 3

In the About Microsoft Data Protection Manager dialog box, the Version label is displayed. However, the version number is not displayed.

Issue 4

On the Action menu, the Help command is displayed two times. This issue occurs because you can now access Help for DPM by using the DPM Help command. The Help item on the Action menu refers to Microsoft Management Console (MMC) help.

Issue 5

In the DPM console view menu, the Expand All and Collapse All menu commands are displayed multiple times.

Issue 6

The Windows PowerShell cmdlet to query licenses that are being used is added.

Issue 7

A DPM backup may fail for a SharePoint farm with a mirrored content database whose mirrored server name starts with the principal server name. For example, this issue may occur when the principal server name is "MachineName," the mirrored server name is "MachineName1," and the content database resides on a nondefault instance of Microsoft SQL Server.

This issue may occur when a consolidated backup failure warning is raised for all the mirrored databases that satisfy the previous conditions.

When this failure occurs, you may receive the following error message:

Prepare for backup operation for SQL Server database CONTENT_DB_NAME (mirrored between – SQL PRINCIPAL and SQL MIRROR ) on SQL-PRINCIPAL.FQDN has been stopped because this operation depended on another backup operation which failed or was cancelled. (ID 30200)

Issue 8

Expiry dates for valid datasets that are already written to tape are changed when the retention range is changed during a protection group modification.

For example, a protection group is configured for long-term tape recovery points with custom long-term recovery goals. Recovery Goal 1 has a smaller retention range than other recovery goals. In this configuration, if a protection group is changed to remove Recovery Goal 1 and to keep other recovery goals, the datasets that were created by using Recovery Goal 1 have their retention range changed to the retention range of the other recovery goals.

To work around this problem, create the IsDatasetExpiryDateChangeInModifyPgAllowed DWORD under the following subkey, and then set its value to 0:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Configuration\MediaManager

Issue 9

Tapes are marked as reusable on the next day after the date of expiry as DPM runs a reclamation job only at midnight. If you want the tape to be reusable on the same date as it is expired, create the ExpireDatasetOnDayStart 32- bit DWORD, and set its value to 1 under the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Configuration\MediaManager

Issue 10

DPM does not enable browsing of a protected folder on a protected server that has an invalid created date and time.

Issue 11

A tape backup of millions of files fails, and you receive the following error message:

ID 998
Details: The parameter is incorrect (0x80070057).

DPM 2012 Trail

Download the DPM 2012 trail here

DPM survey

Got a good ide? Share it!

I’m conducting a survey to let the community voice be heard. Many of you are using System Center Data Protection Manager or DPM and probably got the idea that something’s could me made differently.

Here is your chance to let your ideas and thoughts of the product be heard. The survey is open from 1^st of September to 13^th of October.

Feel free to email robert.hedblom@gmail.com and lists your thoughts and ideas regarding improvements or missing features of DPM.  Please type DPM survey as your Subject.

Download Windows Server 2012

You can now download Windows Server 2012 with a 180 days trail.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh670538.aspx?ocid&wt.mc_id=TEC_108_1_33

Error upgrading DPM 2010 to DPM 2012

I ran into a problem regarding upgrading from DPM 2010 to DPM 2012 the other day. When performing the upgrade I got the error 832 that would like me to verify that the SQL server was properly installed and running.

 

During the upgrade from DPM 2010 to DPM 2012, SQL takes two inputs for adding some permissions to the DPM database. If the error occur then the account DPMDBReader have the wrong syntax. On the faulty upgraded server the syntax of the account is ’\DPMDBReader$’ it should be ‘DPMDBReader$’

To resolve this error and be able to perform your upgrade you must delete the schema named DPMDBReader$ in the original DPM 2010 SQL database and then perform the upgrade again.

To delete the schema open the SQL management studio on the DPM 2010 server do this:

1. Open the SQL Management Studio and connect to the DPM instance
2. Go to DPMDB
3. Security
4. Schema
5. Delete the DPMDBReader$Machinename schema.

Microsoft Virtual Academy

MVA (Microsoft Virtual Academy) released a bunch of good online  tranings for System Center 2012 and the cloud concept that I must recommend you to have a look at.

Register an account and get on learning =)

https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/colleges/SystemCenter2012

Trouble Shooting Certificate Based Authentication for DPM

Certificate based authentication is a new great feature included in DPM 2012 and it will really help a lot of those people having a challenge backing up their production servers within an untrusted domain.

The one an only Shane Brasher MSFT at Microsoft published a series of three parts covering trouble shooting Certificate Based Authentication. Here are the URL’s:

DPM Certificate Troubleshooting-Part 1: General Troubleshooting
DPM Certificate Troubleshooting- Part 2: Registry
DPM Certificate Troubleshooting-Part 3-Certificates

 Shane your doing an amazing job!!

DPM 2012 training

Since there is no DPM training from Microsoft Learning I have made one my self based up on DPM 2012 SP1. Attending this class you will know what System Center Data Protection Manger 2012 SP1 is all about.

Have a look at this URL and I hope to see YOU in my classroom =)

http://www.truesec.com/infrastructure/labs/system_center/mastering_system_center_data_protection_manager_dpm

Microsoft Extended Expert Team

I have received the honorable MEET (Microsoft Extended Expert Team) membership. I am very grateful and I hope that I can continue help people with their questions regarding the System Center family from Microsoft.

Great time at TechEd

I had the privilege of working in the booth for System Center Infrastructure Management together with Vishal Mehrotra PM for DPM and VMM. It was great meeting all of you who had a lot of great questions regarding DPM and also those who follows my blog.

See you all soon again!

System Center SP1 CTP2 is here

The CTP2 release of System Center SP1 is finally here.

Download the installation binaries here http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30133

DPM goes Cloud

During the TechEd event in Orlando Microsoft went public that System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 will be able to back up a production environment to the cloud using Azure technology.

There are some considerations for those of you who are thinking whooohaaa let’s go:

1. Pricing. Microsoft has not yet set the pricing model for DPM using Azure
2. You still need a primary DPM sever on site in your datacenter or production environment
3. This feature will be released with Service Pack 1 (SP1) BETA release if you are up for trying

Many of you maybe also consider security issues for cloud based backup. Since Azure will use a very advanced and sophisticated technique encrypting the data transmitted to Azure you can stay secure.

Neither will the government have access or can claim access to your data placed in the Azure cloud since the only one who has the correct encryption key is you.

Let get cloudy!

TechEd Orlando 2012

I’m heading to Orlando Florida US to attend TechEd and hopefully help out with your questions regarding DPM.

If you are attening TechEd I’m really looking forward to meet you in the DPM booth =)

CU I Florida!

Upgrades prerequisites for DPM 2010 to DPM 2012

Before you can perform an upgrade from DPM 2010 to DPM 2012 you must apply the QFE 4 called KB2615782, you can download the QFE4 by clicking here.

There have been some threads in the DPM forum regarding the prerequisites for upgrading DPM 2010 to 2012 and I hope this blog post will straighten those question marks.

Remap the tape drive information

Every occurd that the DPM server suddenly lost track of the tape configuration?

Looking at the Libraries tab you will only see stand-alone tape drives and not your library? Don’t worry, you just need to remap your tape drives and / or library information.

The tape drive and library information resides in a configuration file named DPMLA.xml and it is located under the config folder under your DPM server installation.

There are two ways of getting your library back on track:

1. Manually create the DPMLA.xml file from the LADriveRemappingTemplate.xml that resides in the config catalogue of the DPM server installation
2. Use the DPMDriveMapping.exe executable that resides in the bin catalogue of the DPM server installation
   

The easiest way is to use the DPMDriveMapping.exe executable since it will create a new DPMLA.xml file for you.

• Open an elevated command prompt
• Run the DPMDriveMapping.exe from \Bin catalogue
• Start the DPM console
• Go to Management and libraries
• Run a Rescan
  

Private Cloud Certification

Good news keeps popping up around System Center 2012 and here is another one. You now can get certified for the Private Cloud and becoming a MCSE: Private Cloud (yes the MCSE title is back).

To become this you should take two exams 247 and 246. Microsoft recommends you to become a MCSA: Windows Server 2008 first before continuing to the 247 and 246 exam.

Presentation of DPM 2012 at NIC 2012

I went to Norway in January to present the new features and functions of DPM 2012 at the great conference NIC.

Click here to watch the presentation

Windows Server 2012

It’s now official that code name ”Windows Server 8” will be called Windows Server 2012.

Let the fun times begin =)

System Center 2012 released

I’m happy to announce that System Center 2012 is now released and available for downloads.

For you who isn’t familiar with the other family members in System Center please have a look at this link

Information regarding System Center 2012

From 101 to 2, the new licensing form

One of the news regarding the new licensing form is that you can’t buy the license by server technology, this means that you can’t by just the DPM server license.

Instead Microsoft thinks that you should get a better value out of your purchases. Now you got two licensing models or types. The Datacenter license or the little brother Standard license.

There is actually no difference between the types of workloads you can manage with the two different licenses. The only difference is how many Operating System Environments or OSE’s you can manage per license.

In the Datacenter license you can manage an unlimited number of OSE’s; regarding the standard license you can manage only two OSE’s.

For more information regarding the new licensing forms please have a look at this PDF

The size of the blocks

During the past days I have been investigating the size of the blocks of data that is transmitted from the production server via the DPM agent to the DPM server.

This is interesting in many ways but mostly is due to storage. This size will be the size written to the DPM disk pool, this means that you can optimize your storage. The block size the DPM agent sends to the DPM server is 256KB.

Another part that also is important is how the actual write process from the DPM server to the disk pool. There are many different techniques but the most common is small(8k) or large (64k) sequencally I/O? DPM will write the data to the disk pool with a large 64 sequencally data.

Tape management improvements

The purpose of this blog post is really to gather information that I can submit to the DPM product group regarding what improvements YOU would like to see regarding tape management in DPM.

No suggestions are a bad suggestion! Post them.

Please email me your suggestions to robert.hedblom@gmail.com

Restoring a deleted user in AD

There’s some lack of information regarding how to restore a user account / user object in Active Directory if it’s been accidently deleted.

In Windows Server 2008 R2 you have the paper basket function that allows you to “restore” deleted objects within the tombstone time interval.

If you would like to restore the User account from a System State backup you must do this in two steps.

1. Restore the System State information with DPM and wbadmin

2. Use NTDSUTIL to restore an object from the System state backup previously restored.

Let’s have a look at these two steps in a more detailed view.

When you restore the System State you’ll have to ways of doing this. From the DPM server, restore the System State to a Domain Controller OR restore the System State locally to a shared folder on the DPM server. In this example I will restore the system state locally on the DPM server.

Part 1

Restore the System State to the local catalogue in the DPM server and share the underlying catalogue named DPM_Recovered_AT_* with read rights with the shareame systemstate.

Part 2

Now you must put the domain controller into a Directory Service Restore Mode. To do this, go to the domain controller and open a command prompt.

Type bcdedit /set safeboot dsrepair and then restart your server. Now your domain controller will start in a safe mode and you must log on locally to the Domain Controller.

It’s now time to restore the systemstate file that resides on the DPM server, we will use wbadmin to achieve this. The first thing you must do is to verify the version of the systemstate backup.

Open a command prompt and type the following syntax:
Wbadmin get versions –backuptarget:\\[DPMSERVERNAME]\systemstate

Mark the version identifiers output and copy that. Now you will start the systemstate recovery operation using Wbadmin.

In my example I will type: Wbadmin start systemstaterecovery –version:01/11/2012-13:00 -backuptarget:\\dpm1\systemstate

You’ll get at question regarding if you want to start the system state recovery, type Y and press enter.

You’ll get a second question regarding if you’re sure to use a network folder, type Y and press enter.

You’ll get a third question regarding replicated content to be resynchronized, type Y and press enter.

Now the restore operation begins.

Several files will be restored.

The writers will recovery those files and report back to wbadmin.

The System Writer will restore the data.

After the System Writer has finished it will give you an output regarding the result of the restore operation. Don’t type y yet.

Open another command prompt and we will restore the deleted account using ntdsutil.exe. In the command prompt type ntdsutil and press enter.

Now you must set the instance. Type activate instance NTDS and press enter.

Now you must define which type of restore you will perform. In this example we will use a authoritative restore. Type authoritative restore and press enter.

Now you type in the distinguished name (DN) for the user you want to restore, in my case the user name is Adam Svensson.

Restore object ” CN=Adam Svensson,CN=Users,DC=contoso,DC=com” and press enter.

You’ll get a question if you want to perform this Authoritative Restore, click on Yes.

The restore of the user object will now start to restore.

When the restore is done type quit two times to exit the ntdsutil tool.

Now type bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot and restart the server.

Done!