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In OCS 2007 there was a tool you could use to automatically push out contacts to your OCS users. This was helpful so the end user would not have to go enter everyone they wanted to their contacts  manually in the Communicator client.

This tool was called  LCSAddContacts and it was a script you ran on the server. Well in Lync 2010 Microsoft did not add this ability into Lync 2010 and the LCSAddContacts no longer exists. Fortunately MVP Jeff Guillet has created a tool called LyncAddContacts that can do this for Lync 2010. Here is the link to that tool:

http://www.expta.com/2011/01/introducing-lyncaddcontacts.html

Hello DPM Community,

This is Steve here. I recently published a book on DPM 2010. I have been fortunate to team up with Microsoft DPM MVP’s Robert Hedblom and Islam Gomaa to write a DPM 2012 book. We are in the planning stages for this book. We would like to know from the community what specific topics would you like to see covered in this book? Post your responses here in the comments.

Thank You for your feedback.

Reporting for DPM has been a problem for many DPM administrators. You need better reporting on scheduled backup jobs, success/failures of backup jobs, details on tape jobs, SLA reports, and more. Your only other option was to create custom reports in DPM using the SQL views that come with DPM. I posted on how to do this a while back here:
http://www.buchatech.com/2011/01/building-custom-reports-in-dpm/.

Working with SQL views is not the easiest way to get custom reports if you are new to or not savvy with SQL Reporting services. Well the alternative to this is Prism.

A company named Bocada has developed a product called Prism that helps you get better reporting out of your backup solutions. They have a flavor for DPM. The nice folks at Bocada gave me a demo of this product live in action. Thanks Ralph!

I am going to give you some more details about Prism for DPM in this post.

There are many pros to Prism and only a couple of cons. One of the cons is that you still cannot bring the custom reports into the DPM console. They are however web based and easy enough to access. 
There still is a slight learning curve to learn how to customize reports.

Prism is a stand alone product that is deployed on a server and accessed via a web browser. It runs on top of IIS and accesses the DPM data directly through the DPM SQL database. Once Prism has collected information about DPM it is able to present the information as reports.

Prism can be setup to gather information from multiple DPM servers for reporting therefore it can be used in enterprises with many DPM servers.

Brocada  teamed up with Microsoft to create two default DPM specific reports in conjunction with reporting DPM related data in Prism. These reports are:

• Recovery Point Summary
  Recovery Point Summary provides a summary of the number of Non-expired recovery points, Date of the last non-expired recovery point and the average recovery point in Range for all the clients being protected. 

• Recovery Point Status
  Recovery Point Status lets you see the various success or failures of your daily recovery points. 

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Ruud Baars (Rest In Peace) of Microsoft hosted a DPM setting export/import tool on his skydrive called DPM-save-create-Config.

This tool contains 2 PowerShell scripts called DPMsaveConfig and DPMcreateConfig that could be used to save your DPM settings to an .xml file and then import the settings in from that .xml file. The link is here:

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=b03306b628ab886f&sc=documents&id=B03306B628AB886F%21859

When you run DPMsaveConfig it creates a DPMsaveConfig.XML in %systemdrive%\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\bin.

Then when you run DPMcreateConfig it will automatically search for the DPMsaveConfig.XML and import the DPM settings from here.

The beauty of this tool is that it was created in PowerShell so you can go in and modify the scripts if you need to.

You can also download a copy of this tool directly from my blog here: DPM-save-create-Config

THE NEED:

In DPM you may run into scenarios where you are backing up a folder or a volume and there are folders or sub-folders that you actually don’t need  or want to protect. There is a way to “exclude” these from the backup. Before we talk about how to do this lets look at an example of why you would want to do this.

THE EXAMPLE:

Lets say you have a Windows cluster and you are backing up the c volume on one of your nodes in the cluster. This cluster is a Hyper-V cluster and you are protecting the virtual machines in your cluster directly. The C:\ClusterStorage folder on the c volume is where your .VHD’s and other virtual machine data is stored. You do not want to backup this folder because the virtual machines are being protected directly by DPM but you want to continue protecting everything else on the c volume. This is where  being able to exclude the C:\ClusterStorage folder comes into play.

THE SOLUTION:

Here is how you can exclude something from being backed up by DPM. There is a registry key on Windows servers called “FilesNotToBackup”. This key needs to be modified on the protected server with the data you want to exclude from the backup. It is that simple. Now here is how you do this.

Make a registry entry to the FilesNotToBackup list in the registry on the protected server you want to exclude data on.                         DPM/VSS will honor the FileNotToBackup list.

The path is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup add a Multi-String (REG_MULTI_SZ) value and place something like: C:\ClusterStorage (or any data you want to exclude from backup) in the Value Data field.

The next time the data is protected it should skip the C:\ClusterStorage (or any data you have selected to exclude from backup).

DPM’s data protection is facilitated by the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Therefore VSS is the secret sauce. VSS is in OS’s and Microsoft applications such as Exchange, SharePoint, and Hyper-V have their own VSS writers. Yes this may be old news as the VSS technology  has been around for some time but many IT Professionals still do not have a good understanding of VSS itself.

It is important for anyone working with DPM and even many other backup products out there to get a good understanding of VSS to know how the data protection is working underneath the hood. Microsoft has some  really good sites that explain VSS well. As a data protection protection pro it is important to go through these and become familiar with how VSS works:

• Basic VSS Concepts

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa381504%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

• Common Volume Backup Issues

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa381508%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

• Troubleshooting VSS Applications

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa384626%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

• Volume Shadow Copy Glossary

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa384647%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

• Volume Shadow Copy Service Overview

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee923636%28WS.10%29.aspx

Microsoft has released a web based tool that can be used to build PowerShell cmdlets for SharePoint. This is a great tool for those that are new to SharePoint PowerShell or PowerShell in general. It allows you to drag and drop a PowerShell verb and noun into a design surface and then input your specific SharePoint information such as farm, site collection database etc to complete the cmdlet. Once you have the cmdlet designed you can copy it out  and can run it on your server.

Microsoft announced this tool At the 2011 SharePoint Conference in Anaheim, CA which I was at. I missed that announcement and learned about this tool from Russ Kaufmann’s blog.  Thanks Russ!

Here is a link to more information about PowerShell for SharePoint and  this tool:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff603532

Here is a link to the tool itself:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/TechNet/en-us/Office/media/WindowsPowerShell/WindowsPowerShellCommandBuilder.html

Microsoft DPM MVP Robert Hedblom will be hosting a free webcast covering what the new features are in DPM 2012.

Here is the information from his blog:

Interested in DPM? Want to know the new features in DPM2012?

At the 13/10 1PM GMT+1 I will host a webcast (Live meeting) that addresses the new features and will also show the new GUI.

Please email me @ robert.hedblom[at]gmail.com and I will provide you the link and information you need.

This is free , you don’t have to pay to attend

Date:13/10 2011
Time:1 PM GMT +1

Today I became Backup Academy Certified in VMware & Hyper-V backup.

Backup Academy is an online training and certification resource created and powered by Veeam. Veeam is a virtualization backup software company. Backup Academy has an online certification test that you can take it is much like other certifications requiring 70% or higher score to pass.

Backup Academy has 8 training videos by IT industry experts. These videos cover the basics of backup, backup of virtualized environments, VSS, Windows Server Backup, VMware backup tools, best practices for backing up VMware and Hyper-V environments, and more. It does not cover DPM but Backup Academy will have more content when they update in the future. Maybe they will add Data Protection Manager to the training and certification at some point!

Here are the experts that have contributed to the training and certification on Backup Academy:

Greg Shields: Greg holds both Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert status and is a senior partner at Concentrated Technology.

David Davis: David holds VMware vExpert status as well as Cisco CCIE and VMware VCAP credentials. David is a popular blogger, author and expert in the virtualization community.

Elias Khnaser: Elias holds VMware vExpert status and is the CTO at Sigma Solutions. Elias has authored a number of books on IT certifications and is a popular blogger on a number of websites.

Eric Siebert: Eric holds VMware vExpert status and a number of IT certifications. Eric has authored several books and is a popular blogger.

Rick Vanover: Rick holds VMware vExpert status and a number of IT certifications. Rick is a popular blogger and podcaster.

This certification is a good indication that you as an IT Professional understand the basics of backup. I recommend this training and certification for anyone that works with data protection. It is good for the beginner and a good refresher for experienced backup admins.

Here is the Backup Academy  website: http://www.backupacademy.com

Here is a blog post with more information on the academy and certification: VEEAM Post on Backup Academy

DPM 2012 Beta is out. One of the new features of DPM 2012 is that you can install the DPM Administrator Console on other servers or workstations and manage your DPM 2012 and even DPM 2010 servers remotely without having to logon to the DPM server. The cool part is that you can manage existing DPM 2010 servers. This is done through applying a hotfix to your DPM 2010 server and installing the console on your workstation or server from the DPM 2012 beta software.

In this blog post we are going to walk through setting this up. It is a simple two step install installing the hotfix on the DPM 2010 server first and then the console on the workstation. Here is the process:

First download the DPM 2010 Interoperability patch for DPM 2012 Beta hotfix (DataProtectionManager2010-KB2581742) and DPM 2012 Beta.

• DPM 2010 hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581742
• DPM 2012 Beta: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27216

Copy the DPM 2010 Interoperability patch hotfix for DPM 2012 Beta  to your DPM 2010 server.

Make sure your DPM 2010 is all up to date. Once DPM 2010 is up to date install the beta hotfix.

Open up DPM 2010 after the hotfix and verify it is still working.

Now the DPM 2010 server is ready lets install the console on the client machine.

Here are the steps:

Navigate to the DPM 2012 Beta install and chose 32 or 64Bit depending on what your workstation is.

Launch the DPM 2012 Beta install on your local workstation.

Select “DPM Central Console” to begin.

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