Jason Buffington, the “Data Protection Guy” at Microsoft explains the difference between DPM 2006 and DPM 2007 (Data Protection Manager) with respect to continuous data protection. Whereas DPM 2006 uses a file system filter “to grab a copy of the file operation”, DPM 2007 uses a VSS writer (Volume Shadow Copy Service) instead.

From this it follows that DPM 2007 won’t be able to protect Windows 2000 since it doesn’t support VSS. The advantage of this move is that DPM 2007 can secure Windows XP and Windows Vista which wasn’t possible with DPM 2006.

It certainly makes sense to rely more on VSS. However, I think that for many the lack of Windows 2000 support will be a knock down argument against DPM 2007. If you have just one Windows 2000 server left in your datacenter, you probably won’t give up your current backup software and move to Microsoft’s solution.

We got rid of our Windows 2000 systems already shortly after Windows 2003 was released. We have only about 30 servers, so it was not such a big deal. For us the better VSS integration is a plus. I am particularly interested in backing up Virtual Server 2005 with DPM 2007 which also relies on VSS.

If you are interested in how DPM 2007 secures data, you should check out this Microsoft video. It is quite interesting and well-explained.

Leave a Comment | Subscribe RSS | Newsletter |