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Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager

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Protect SQL Server

Does your company rely on Microsoft SQL Server to manage and deliver information? Who will you trust to maximize its protection and recovery?

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) is designed for the database administrator or the IT generalist and uses wizards and workflows to help ensure that you can protect your data — without requiring an advanced degree, training, or certification in storage and backup technologies.

DPM protects SQL Server databases every 15 minutes, but can restore not only to each of those 15-minute marks, but also enable administrators to recovery to any transaction point, or even to the very latest committed transaction following an outage.

Watch and Learn

TechNet Webcast: Protect SQL Server 2008 with Data Protection Manager 2007 (Level 300)


Blogcast: How Does DPM Really Work?

How DPM Protects SQL Server Databases

DPM uses a combination of transaction log replication and block-level synchronization in conjunction with the SQL Server VSS Writer to help ensure your ability to recover SQL Server databases. After the initial baseline copy of data, two parallel processes enable continuous data protection with integrity:

  1. Transaction logs are continuously synchronized to the DPM server, as often as every 15 minutes.

  2. An “express full” uses the SQL Server VSS Writer to identify which blocks have changed in the entire production database, and sends just the updated blocks or fragments. This provides a complete and consistent image of the data files on the DPM server or appliance. DPM maintains up to 512 shadow copies of the full SQL Server database(s) by storing only the differences between any two images.

What’s Coming in DPM 2010 for SQL Server

DPM 2010 (Beta) builds upon the DPM 2007 solution for SQL Server and adds:

  • Protection for up to 2,000 databases per DPM server

  • Protection at a SQL instance level, so all new databases within the instance are automatically protected

  • A self-service recovery capability for database administrators, so you can restore your databases from your SQL Server console (without the DPM Administrator Console). This includes role-based permissions.

To learn more about DPM 2010 Beta or download it yourself, see the DPM 2010 Beta Overview page.