IT Technology News and Progent Business Solutions

Microsoft has published System Center Data Protection Manager 2010, a comprehensive backup-and-restore platform designed specifically for supporting Windows servers and clients. Data Protection Manager 2010 allows on-going,transparent backup of both physical and virtual computers to onsite or off-site disk drives plus off-line copying to magnetic tape, and enables rapid, easy-to-manage recovery of whole computers or individual files. DPM's disk drive backup provides the performance and reliability required to preserve your vital business data without interrupting network availability, while Data Protection Manager's mag tape compatibility keeps long-term archiving expenses low and simplifies compliance with industry or legal retention mandates.

Many small businesses continue to rely on outdated, tape-centric backup and restore solutions. In the event of a major IT breakdown, this can lead to significant income loss due to prolonged system downtime and, in the worst case, unrecoverable information. Tape-based backup procedures are unreliable because tape media is subject to mechanical wear and requires a tightly controlled warehousing environment. Microsoft reported a whopping 17% failure rate when utilizing mag tape to archive their in-house production servers. Mag tape is also slow. Because of this, backup processes call for periodic server downtime, restoration snap shots are often spaced apart by days instead of minutes, and the recovery process is time consuming and tricky.

Data Protection Manager solves these shortcomings by supporting fast, reliable disks for short-term backup while relegating tape to long-term storage. The speed of hard disks allows continual non-disruptive backup, reduces restoration point spacing to as low as 15 minutes, and substantially lowers recovery time. For enhanced disk dependability, Data Protection Manager supports disk clusters and non-stop storage arrays. New features of DPM 2010 include operation with Windows 2008 Hyper-V R2 virtual machines and Clustered Shared Volumes, the ability to recover individual files, Database Availability Group support for Exchange 2010, enhanced operation with SharePoint Server, and protection during a Live Migration process.

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

• Determine your recovery targets and create a backup policy to meet them
• Create a cost-effective multi-site network architecture to support DPM
• Set up Microsoft Windows 2008, Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange Server, and SharePoint Server to run with DPM
• Configure Protection Groups and Storage Pools
• Estimate and reserve hard disk space for protection
• Define tape library circulation and management
• Configure DPM Protection Agents on computers inside and outside your network firewall
• Optimize backup and recovery performance

Additional DPM Consulting and Support Services Available from Progent
Progent's Cisco CCIE network engineers can help your company to design a resilient network infrastructure that is economical to install and easy to maintain and that provides maximum uptime and data protection. Progent's CISSP-ISSAP security experts can assist your company to produce and validate a business continuity plan that is economically sensible for your situation, ensures security for your sensitive corporate information, and minimizes downtime in case of a major IT failure.

Contact Progent for Assistance from a Microsoft-Certified DPM 2010 Consultant
In order to ask Progent about engineering help for System Center DPM 2010 integration, call 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.