Phandalyon
Guest
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2001
- Messages
- 5,839
Well, DPM is driving me absolutely nuts.
For those who have not heard of it, the software is Microsoft Data Protection Manager. It is a great concept, but I am spending about 60% of my time babysitting it and I am fed up. Let me explain in detail.
I have 3 servers, one is an SBS server which does all of our number crunching. It has 5 drive arrays that get backed up.
1 2x750GB RAID1 for My Docs
1 2x750GB RAID1 for Misc Shares
1 2x500GB RAID1 for System and Sharepoint
1 2x250GB RAID1 for Exchange
1 2x250GB RAID1 for SQL Server
This gives a potential of 2.5TB that needs to be backed up on that server. That particular server is a Dual Xeon with 4GB RAM running SBS 2003. Decent enough for our needs.
The second server is our webserver. It has <100GB total potential space that needs to be backed up. It is an old gateway server. PIII or something with 1GB RAM running windows 2000 server.
The third server is running Windows Server 2003 Standard and is set up just to run DPM. It has a 160GB mirrored system array and 4x1TB drives for the DPM storage. So we have a total of 4TB to back up 2.6TB of potential data.
Currently all of the drives on the SBS server are <50% full. Most are less than 25%.
The problem I am running into is that the DPM file agent on mainserver is constantly just disappearing from the DPM server and the backups are not getting done.
DPM is supposed to monitor for file changes every hour and make the necessary backups. It worked for us perfectly for the first 6 months or so we had it up and running. Since then we have had to expand the storage needs on the SBS server and it has ceased working properly. Out of 14 official backups that DPM is supposed to do in a week I will usually get 2-3 that work. Every weekend the backup fails and I end up needing to spend the entire week getting all of the backups working again only for them to break the next weekend.
Microsoft has suggested that I am overwhelming the backup system and that I should consider adding a second DPM server to the mix. The problem I have with that is the server never hits above 16% CPU activity, never has more than 50% of its RAM in use, and the drive activity monitor shows fairly light to moderate drive usage. I don't see any signs of this computer being overworked.
To make a really long story short, I think that DPM is a failed software and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions about a replacement.
Ideally I would like it to work on the same concept. A single server managing the backups of the other two servers and bineg able to manage restores and create offsite backups for me to take home. I currently have 2x 1TB external drives that I rotate out and take home once a week.
We intend to upgrade to SBS 2008 x64 when it becomes available, so I will need to be able to back that up. At that time we also intend to replace the webserver and get a Server 2008 machine. We are currently running DPM 2006 and have thought about upgrading to 2007 when we make the move (DPM 2006 will not back up Windows 2000 at all). A lot of people have run into these same issues with DPM 2007 though and I am just not sure that the upgrade will solve anything for us.
Another more general question is what type of backup solution would you use in my situation. DPM would be great if it worked, but it just doesn't.
For those who have not heard of it, the software is Microsoft Data Protection Manager. It is a great concept, but I am spending about 60% of my time babysitting it and I am fed up. Let me explain in detail.
I have 3 servers, one is an SBS server which does all of our number crunching. It has 5 drive arrays that get backed up.
1 2x750GB RAID1 for My Docs
1 2x750GB RAID1 for Misc Shares
1 2x500GB RAID1 for System and Sharepoint
1 2x250GB RAID1 for Exchange
1 2x250GB RAID1 for SQL Server
This gives a potential of 2.5TB that needs to be backed up on that server. That particular server is a Dual Xeon with 4GB RAM running SBS 2003. Decent enough for our needs.
The second server is our webserver. It has <100GB total potential space that needs to be backed up. It is an old gateway server. PIII or something with 1GB RAM running windows 2000 server.
The third server is running Windows Server 2003 Standard and is set up just to run DPM. It has a 160GB mirrored system array and 4x1TB drives for the DPM storage. So we have a total of 4TB to back up 2.6TB of potential data.
Currently all of the drives on the SBS server are <50% full. Most are less than 25%.
The problem I am running into is that the DPM file agent on mainserver is constantly just disappearing from the DPM server and the backups are not getting done.
DPM is supposed to monitor for file changes every hour and make the necessary backups. It worked for us perfectly for the first 6 months or so we had it up and running. Since then we have had to expand the storage needs on the SBS server and it has ceased working properly. Out of 14 official backups that DPM is supposed to do in a week I will usually get 2-3 that work. Every weekend the backup fails and I end up needing to spend the entire week getting all of the backups working again only for them to break the next weekend.
Microsoft has suggested that I am overwhelming the backup system and that I should consider adding a second DPM server to the mix. The problem I have with that is the server never hits above 16% CPU activity, never has more than 50% of its RAM in use, and the drive activity monitor shows fairly light to moderate drive usage. I don't see any signs of this computer being overworked.
To make a really long story short, I think that DPM is a failed software and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions about a replacement.
Ideally I would like it to work on the same concept. A single server managing the backups of the other two servers and bineg able to manage restores and create offsite backups for me to take home. I currently have 2x 1TB external drives that I rotate out and take home once a week.
We intend to upgrade to SBS 2008 x64 when it becomes available, so I will need to be able to back that up. At that time we also intend to replace the webserver and get a Server 2008 machine. We are currently running DPM 2006 and have thought about upgrading to 2007 when we make the move (DPM 2006 will not back up Windows 2000 at all). A lot of people have run into these same issues with DPM 2007 though and I am just not sure that the upgrade will solve anything for us.
Another more general question is what type of backup solution would you use in my situation. DPM would be great if it worked, but it just doesn't.