Data Protection Manager 2012

1.) Yes, DPM can run on a virtual machine. Just be aware, that DMP may produce heavy network traffic. But as virtual machines have usually a virtual 10 GB network device, should be not the problem.

2.) DPM uses disk or tapes as bakup devices and creates partitions for each protection group / protection element. You can either give DPM a physical disk, i.e. by the virtualisation hoste or you can use iSCSI as well as Fibre Channel connections. Even you can mix the devices. But in a way, DPM has to be able to see them.

I run DPM with virtual assigned disks via the virtualisation host, local disk exposed via Microsoft iSCSI target as well as a tape device, exposed by Starwind tape to iSCSI software.
On the DPM the iSCSI Initiator is configured to grab the devices vis iSCSI together.
The DPM sees than like local disks.

The Microsoft iSCSI target jsut creates a virtual disc (vhd) on a local accessable device and exposes it as iSCSI device.
The Solarwind software (free) uses a local tape device on a physical machine and exposes it as sSCSI device.

So, if at least one machine can access the NAS as a disc and can create a vhd on it, you can expose it via iSCSI to DPM. If DPM can access the device directy and acces sit as disc, you can unse it directly.

Hi Bembi, I'm assuming the iSCSI is an actual physical connection between the Host and the NAS or is it some kind of virtual thing using the LAN ... sorry, no knowledge of the iSCSI ... although I had tons of experience with the old SCSI back in the day.