DPM 2012 R2 UR3 released

Today the UR3 for System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 was released and with that Microsoft Product Group team in India sealed the deal regarding private cloud protection. More blogpost will follow regarding protecting your private cloud using the great features of System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 R2.

Features that are implemented in this update rollup

• Scalable VM backup
  
  This update rollup improves the reliability at scale for Virtual Machine (VM) backups on Hyper-V and Windows Server 2012 R2 infrastructures. This feature is supported on both Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and scale-out file server (SOFS) storage configurations for VMs.
  
  Prerequisites
  • You must apply the following Windows hotfix:
    
    
    Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 Update: April 2014

    (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2919355/ )
  • You must upgrade the DPM 2012 R2 agent to DPM 2012 R2 UR3 on all nodes of Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V clusters.
  • You must restart the cluster nodes.
    
• Backup and consistency check window
  
  Important This feature is supported only for disk protection for VM data sources.
  
  This feature, configured through Windows PowerShell, enables specific time windows to restrict backup and consistency check (CC) jobs. This window can be applied per protection group and will limit all jobs for that protection to the specified time window.
  
  After the backup job has ended, all in-progress jobs can continue. Any queued jobs outside the backup and consistency jobs will be automatically canceled.
  
  This feature affects only scheduled jobs and does not affect specific jobs that are triggered by the user.
  
  Windows PowerShell script examples
  (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn741303.aspx)
  are available on Microsoft TechNet. These examples show how to use PowerShell cmdlets to create the backup and consistency window.
  
  Notes
  • This feature is not supported for tape or cloud protection jobs.
  • This feature is not supported for non-VM data sources.
  • Setting these windows is the same as running a Modify Protection Group workflow.
  
  
• Support for synthetic fiber channel-to-tape
  
  This update rollup introduces support for the synthetic fiber channel-to-tape process. Follow the tape certification process
  (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj733581.aspx)
  for third-party tape devices when you use Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2012 R2.

Issues that are fixed in this update rollup

• A backup of a mirrored SQL instance fails if the principal SQL instance that was first backed up is now the mirror.
• DPM console crashes while a recatalog or "mark as free" operation is performed on an imported tape.
• The MSDPM service crashes when protected data sources have long names.
• The DPMRA service crashes during replica creation when the database name on one of the SQL instances matches or is a substring of a SQL instance name that is hosted on the protected server.
• This update lets administrators configure the DPMRA port and select a nondefault port by following these steps:
  1. Install UR3 for DPM 2012 R2.
  2. Run Setagentcfg.exe by using the following command:
     
     

     setagentcfg.exe s  

     
     Notes
     • In this command, represents the nondefault port.
     • By default, this command should be located in the following folder:
       
       
       %PROGRAMFILES%/Microsoft System Center 2012 R2/DPM/DPM/Setup
  3. Verify that a new entry is created in the following registry subkey:
     
     
     HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Agent\2.0\PsPortConfig
  4. Copy the setagentcfg.exe file from the DPM server to the following folder on the protected computer:
     
     
     %PROGRAMFILES%\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\bin
  5. Run the following command on the protected server:
     
     

     setagentcfg.exe e DPMRA 

     Note Use the same port number that is specified in step 1.
  6. Restart the DPM server.
  7. Restart the DPMRA service on the protected server.

To get the UR3 for DPM click the following link: http://support2.microsoft.com/kb/2966014