ASR* and DPM

*ASR = Automated system recovery

In our documentation, we recommend, "To ease recovery in the event of system partition failure, install DPM to a partition that is separate from the system partition." We also recommend that you create an ASR set to back up the server system state. How are these recommendations connected?

It has to do with the way DPM works. The DPM program files include mount points to the replicas and shadow copies in the storage pool. If you install DPM on the system partition, then the ASR (or other method of system state backup) will also back up the files through the mount points, resulting in a huge ASR that will fail on restore because the mount points won't be there.

So if you followed our recommendations, you installed DPM to D: (or other drive letter as appropriate) and then the mount points are also created on D:. You create your ASR set from C:, avoiding the mount point issue entirely.

(The ASR isn't your DPM backup though. Check out Using Data Protection Manager and Windows Backup and Archiving and Restoring Data for instructions on backing up and restoring DPM.)