Dario IT Solutions Blog

Hi guys,

We held two open houses this week, one on February 22nd at MediaTech Haifa and the other on February 24th at Microsoft Raanana.

I would like to thank the large number of people who attended, it was great hearing your comments and questions.

Attached below are all the PowerPoint decks from the events:

For your reference, these are the major agent versions (as of December 24th, 2009):

1. DPM 2007 SP0 – 2.0.5820.0
2. DPM 2007 SP1 – 2.0.8793.0
3. DPM 2007 SP1 (with KB963102) – 2.0.8824.0
4. DPM 2007 SP1 (with KB968579) – 2.0.8836.0
5. DPM 2007 SP1 (with KB970867) – 2.0.8844.0
6. DPM 2007 SP1 (with KB970868) – 2.0.8851.0
7. DPM 2007 SP1 (with KB976542) – 2.0.8861.0

Hi guys,

A couple of important facts we learn from our DPM 2007 SP1 implementations:

if you are pushing an agent to a remote Windows 2008 machine that has its FW enabled, add the following path to the firewall outbound rules – “C:\Windows\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\Agents\AC\2.0.5820.0\dpmac.exe” so that the service that installs the DPM agent can communicate with the DPM server.

When configuring VSS backup for Virtual Machines running on Hyper-V, please install the following updates:

1. An update is available for Windows Server 2008-based computers to address issues with backing up and restoring Hyper-V virtual machines
2. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V VSS writer is not used during a backup job because of corrupted or invalid virtual machine configuration files

Good luck!

Management of Virtual Machines is not just about managing the VM’s themselves but also the workloads that run in them. The key to managing the entire IT infrastructure is the integration of both physical and virtual machine management into a single set of tools.

I’ll be giving a presentation on managing a virtual datacenter with SCOM, SCCM, DPM and VMM at a Microsoft Open House that will be held on February 3rd at Microsoft Israel.

The main point in my presentation is that when looking at the data center (or IT environment) as a whole, tools like Systems Center Operations Manger and Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager (that has integration built into them from the grounds up) really stand out in the crowd in comparison to tools that are built for a specific environment (like managing only virtual machines).

One of the demonstrations will involve Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) which is one of VMM’s top features, as it allows administrators to automate practically any type of response to a given condition, including responding to application, virtualization, system, storage, or network events.

I’ll love to get your comments and suggestions regarding the planned presentation and of course to see you at the event

Following is the link with all the info about the Open House, including registration to the event:

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032401717&culture=he-IL

OpsMgr 2007 has  class/object based modeling of any application, and monitoring the various states changes of these objects around the four pillars – Availability, Configuration, Security and Performance.

One can remotely look at various aspects of multiple DPM servers in a centralized fashion, as in the case of the DPM MP – by giving glimpse of all the admin managed objects and its various properties – like what is the number of recovery points in a datasource, or how much size does it occupy, or what tape libraries are working fine etc. In fact, it also build a visual picture (Diagram view) which gives a neat picture of the DPM setup and how the health roll-ups. The health explorer helps show the entire details of all facets to monitoring.

The cool features to watch out in the new pack are:

• Diagram View – to see entire DPM deployment and its managed objects. MP can be used like a Remote UI to see various properties like disk usage, library details, protection and recovery details etc.
• State views – to see the current state of all objects
• Health Explorer – that shows how the MP monitors the entire system, along with Product Knowledge for all.
• Alert view – where the actionable to-do items for operators are logged, that talk about what has failed, and how to fix it.

Download at – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c4f5da8b-1f8a-4861-9a38-61165ff65236&displaylang=en.

As promised, I’ve uploaded the presentations from the sessions I gave on December 18th at Microsoft Israel. Enjoy.

SP 1 for System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 will be available on December 8th 2008. Along with the roll up update this release enhances many of the core features of DPM 2007. The key among them being

1. Protection of Hyper-V� virtualization platforms
2. Enhanced SQL Server 2008 protection
3. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
4. Protection for Exchange Server 2007 Standby Cluster Replication (SCR)

In addition to enhancing the protection of each of the core Microsoft application workloads, additional capabilities have also been introduced with the release of DPM 2007 SP1, such as:

1. Provision for a Client DPML answers customer demand for a more cost-effective way to protect Windows XP and Windows Vista clients using the same DPM 2007 infrastructure that protects their servers
2. Disaster Recovery capabilities within DPM 2007 SP1 now include the ability to leverage a 3rd party vaulting partner via the cloud (SaaS) powered by Iron Mountain.