IT Technology News and Progent Business Solutions

Microsoft has published System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, a comprehensive backup-and-recovery platform designed by Microsoft specifically for protecting Windows file and application servers and clients. Data Protection Manager 2010 allows continual,non-disruptive backup of both physical and virtual computers to onsite or off-site hard disks plus off-line backup to tape, and permits fast, easy-to-manage restoration of entire computers or single files. DPM's disk backup provides the speed and dependability you need to protect your vital business data without interrupting network availability, while Data Protection Manager's mag tape compatibility keeps long-term archiving costs affordable and helps ensure adherence to industry or regulatory retention requirements.

Most small businesses continue to rely on outdated, tape-centric backup and restore technology. In case of a serious IT breakdown, this exposes them to significant income loss because of extended network unavailability and, in the worst case, lost records. Tape-based backup solutions are unreliable because the media is subject to wear and tear and requires a tightly controlled physical environment. Microsoft reported a 17% failure rate when utilizing mag tape to back up their in-house production servers. Mag tape is also inherently low performance. Because of this, backup processes require periodic downtime, recovery points are often separated by days instead of minutes, and the restore procedure is time consuming and tedious.

Data Protection Manager solves these problems by supporting high-performance, dependable disks for online backup while restricting tape to long-term archiving. The speed of hard disks permits ongoing transparent backup, reduces restoration point intervals to as low as 15 minutes, and dramatically lowers restoration time. For improved disk system reliability, Data Protection Manager 2010 supports high availability disk clusters and fault-tolerant arrays. Innovations with DPM 2010 include operation with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V R2 virtualization and Clustered Shared Volumes, the option to restore single files, DAG support for Exchange 2010, enhanced operation with SharePoint, and protection during a Live Migration process.

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

• Determine your protection targets and establish a backup policy to meet them
• Create a cost-effective wide area network architecture to support System Center Data Protection Manager
• Set up Microsoft Windows 2008, SQL Server, Exchange Server, and SharePoint to work with DPM
• Configure Protection Groups
• Estimate and allocate disk space for backup
• Define tape circulation and administration
• Install Protection Agents on computers on both sides of your network firewall
• Optimize backup and restoration speed

Other DPM-related Support Offered by Progent
Progent's Cisco CCIE network engineers can assist you to design a robust network infrastructure that is affordable to install and simple to maintain and that provides maximum system uptime and data protection. Progent's CISSP-ISSAP certified security specialists can assist your company to produce and validate a disaster recovery plan that is financially sensible for your business, ensures security for your sensitive corporate information, and minimizes system downtime in case of a major network failure.

Contact Progent for Support from a Microsoft-Certified DPM 2010 Specialist
To ask Progent about technical support for DPM 2010 integration, phone 1-800-993-9400 or see Contact Progent.