"Why can't I install DPM on a...."

  • Article

There's an old song (70s) with a chorus of "Things get a little easier once you understand." (Okay, I'm dating myself by admitting I remember when the song came out, and it's a really bad song, but the thought fits here.) Things can be easier...to accept, to work around, to deal with...when you understand the reasons.

For example, throughout our content, we tell you that DPM is designed to run on a dedicated, single-purpose server. The server must not be a domain controller or application server.

But why? The question came up in our newsgroup, and I thought the answers worth repeating here.

You can't install DPM on a domain controller because DPM creates its own low access local accounts for security purposes, and it cannot do so on a domain controller.

Security is important, granted, but we don't just say "no domain controllers", we insist on "a dedicated, single-purpose server" -- again, why?

  • Security again. DPM servers may host confidential or business-critical information that could potentially be compromised by other applications.
  • Performance. Both the impact of other applications on DPM's performance, and DPM's impact on other applications.
  • Interoperability. DPM would have to be thoroughly tested with another application before we could say that we support running them on the same system.