Microsoft Issues Public Beta of Microsoft Data Protection Manager

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft last week unveiled the first public beta version of Microsoft Data Protection Manager (DPM), a new application based on Windows Server 2003 that enables companies to implement disk-to-disk backups and recoveries instead of traditional tape-based systems. Microsoft DPM, which is currently slated for general availability in late 2005, has undergone private beta tests at about 30 Windows shops since last fall, and Microsoft says the early results are promising.

The dropping cost of high-speed hard disks over the past few years, in conjunction with the smaller backup windows and higher uptime requirements at many companies, has created a new market for disk-to-disk backup and recovery systems. Sales of these systems has started to pick up over the past year or so, as customers increasingly relegate their investments in tape drives and libraries, which are somewhat less reliable and much slower than disk arrays, for off-site storage and long-term archival duties.

Microsoft jumped into this developing market last September when it announced a product called Microsoft Data Protection Server, or DPS (see "Microsoft to Launch Software for Disk-Based Backups"). That product has since been renamed Microsoft Data Protection Manager, or DPM.

Microsoft DPM runs on Windows Server 2003 and is capable of providing backup and recovery services for servers running Windows Server 2003, Windows Storage Server 2003, and Windows 2000 Server, as well as PCs running Windows XP and Office 2003. DPM agents, which are deployed on the machine to be backed up, continuously replicate the byte-level changes made in the files and libraries slated for backup. These changes, which are transmitted over a LAN or WAN using TCP and DCOM protocols, are then banked on the DPM server, where various backup options, including incremental "point-in-time" snapshots and shadow copy services, are available.

One of the early adopters of DPM is the 10-person IT staff at the New York City Department of Sanitation's (DSNY) Bureau of Motor Equipment, which is responsible for keeping the city's 6,000 collection trucks, mechanical street sweepers, passenger cars, and salt spreaders running smoothly. According to Microsoft, a 23GB backup at this shop that would normally take about 48 hours over a weekend can now be done in about 10 minutes. (Microsoft did not say what the DSNY motor equipment department was using for backups before DPM, when its backups clocked in at a dismal 8 MB-per-second. Obviously, it wasn't using the latest-generation LTO 3 drives, which boast native data transfer speeds of 80 MB per second--double that with compression turned on--but this is a big improvement for DSNY, nonetheless.)

Microsoft reports similarly positive results at Des Moines Public Schools, another private beta tester of DPM. The time available to run backups have decreased significantly for this school district, which uses Windows to store personal documents and grade books for the 5,000 employees and 32,000 students at 16 schools. Previously, it took about 36 hours to back up the district's distributed Windows Server 2003 systems. Under the byte-level replication of DPM (which only backs up the data that has been changed since the last backup), the same task now takes only two hours, Microsoft says. What's more, because DPM is integrated with XP and Office (it is added as an option with drop-down menus in Office apps, as well as through Windows Explorer), teachers can do their own recoveries, which saves IT administrators time.

Making recoveries easy enough for less sophisticated users to use is the whole point of DPM, Microsoft says. "Our whole goal with DPM is to shrink the operational costs associated with IT professionals having to manually recover lost data and manage cumbersome backup and recovery processes," says Ben Matheson, the DPM product manager at Microsoft. "From what our early-adopter customers are telling us, DPM is doing that very effectively."

While DPM is integrated with Office, it's not at this point integrated with Exchange Server or SQL Server, two of the most popular applications in Microsoft's Windows Server stack. "In future versions, we could have a heterogeneous story," Matheson says. "But that decision is going to be based on customer feedback."

While DPM will not currently back up a SQL Server database, it still requires an instance of SQL Server 2000 to run (it's included with DPM), as well as a separate server running Active Directory, and a third server to run any third-party tape backup software, if you want to keep your tape drives, which is recommended. It probably won't be the ideal solution if reducing server sprawl is your main goal.

In addition to the public beta of DPM, Microsoft released two other pieces of code, including a software developer kit (SDK) and a Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) management pack. The SDK helps developers implement the Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) in Windows Server 2003, and is intended for use by ISVs. The Microsoft DPM 2006 Management Pack will enable an administrator centrally monitor data protection, state, health, and performance of multiple DPM computers through MOM 2005.