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swiftny

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Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007 horror stories

I am trying to "sell" DPM to my company's owners. Figure it would be better than a file level backup that an IT consultant setup to backup our Sharepoint and Exchange, along with other data.

Now, I've seen plenty of good about DPM, how it backs up things almost live, does bare metal restore, ends world hunger, hugs babies, etc. What I would like to know is horror stories. How did DPM screw you or anyone you know. How you couldn't restore your servers/desktops because DPM didn't do what it supposed to do.

Anyone feel like sharing?
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kabenson

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swiftny

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Thanks for the comment. We are actually trying to move away from a file level backup, and we have a smaller scale networks, so I don't think things like SAN would make much sense.

We have a Windows 2003 SBS that hosts our exchange and sharepoint
A separate server with SQL 2005 for our CRM
A NAS box for file storage.

Current file level backup size is about 250gb.

What would you suggest as a storage volume for DPM?

Also, my boss is suspicious that DPM must be installed on our SBS server. I say it's not and any member server on the domain will do fine. Can you confirm/deny that?

Thanks in advance!
To answer your last question first, I would say DPM can not be installed on your SBS server.  DPM should reside on its own dedicated hardware.

In terms of retention range, how long would you plan on having recoveries available on disk?

We are keeping 2-weeks on disk and with that retention range for 250GB on a file server I would quickly estimate that you would need at least 400 GB of disk space on the DPM box and more if you want to play it safe.
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ASKER

Thank you, that basically answers the question.