IT Technology News and Progent Business Solutions

Microsoft has published System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, a powerful backup-and-recovery solution built by Microsoft specifically for supporting Windows servers and workstations. Data Protection Manager 2010 allows on-going,non-disruptive backup of physical and virtual systems to onsite or off-site hard disks as well as off-line recording to magnetic tape, and enables fast, easy-to-manage restoration of whole computers or individual files. Data Protection Manager's disk drive backup provides the performance and reliability you need to protect your vital business information without interrupting network availability, while DPM's mag tape support keeps long-term archiving costs affordable and helps ensure compliance with contractual or legal retention mandates.

Most small businesses still rely on outdated, tape-based backup and restore technology. In the event of a major IT breakdown, this exposes them to significant income loss because of prolonged system unavailability and, in the worst case, lost records. Tape-only backup solutions are unreliable because tape media is subject to wear and tear and requires a tightly controlled physical environment. Microsoft reported a whopping 17% failure rate when using mag tape to back up their own operational servers. Mag tape is also inherently low performance. Because of this, backup processes require periodic downtime, restoration snap shots are often spaced apart by days instead of minutes, and the restore procedure is long and tedious.

DPM gets around these problems by supporting fast, reliable disks for short-term backup while relegating tape to long-term storage. The speed of hard disks allows ongoing non-disruptive backup, reduces recovery point spacing to as low as 15 minutes, and dramatically lowers restoration time. For enhanced disk reliability, Data Protection Manager supports high availability disk clustering and non-stop storage arrays. New features of DPM 2010 include operation with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 virtualization and CSV, the ability to recover individual files, Database Availability Group support for Exchange Server 2010, enhanced integration with SharePoint, and full data protection during a Live Migration procedure.

How Progent's Microsoft Engineers Can Assist You Integrate Data Protection Manager 2010
Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants can help you to evaluate the expenses and benefits of DPM 2010 and can help you in all facets of Data Protection Manager integration. Progent can assist you to:

• Define your recovery targets and establish a backup/restore strategy to meet them
• Create an efficient multi-site network architecture to accommodate Data Protection Manager
• Set up Windows 2008, Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, and SharePoint Server to work with DPM 2010
• Configure Storage Pools
• Estimate and allocate disk space for protection
• Plan tape library rotation and administration
• Configure Protection Agents on systems on both sides of your network firewall
• Maximize backup and recovery performance

Additional DPM Consulting and Support Services Available from Progent
Progent's Cisco-certified CCIE network engineers can assist you to design a robust network infrastructure that is affordable to install and easy to manage and that provides maximum system uptime and data protection. Progent's CISSP-ISSAP security experts can assist your company to create and validate a disaster recovery plan that is financially realistic for your business, provides security for your sensitive data, and minimizes downtime in the event a catastrophic IT breakdown.

Call or Email Progent for Support from a Microsoft-Qualified DPM 2010 Expert
In order to get in touch with Progent about engineering support for System Center DPM 2010 integration, phone 1-800-993-9400 or refer to Contact Progent.