How DPM's end user recovery feature works

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Enabling users to recover previous versions of documents isn't new to DPM -- it's part of the Shadow Copies of Shared Folders functionality introduced with Windows Server 2003. What DPM does, with end-user recovery, is leverage that functionality while providing a different target: the shadow copies stored on the DPM server, rather than shadow copies created and stored locally on the file server.

This can be a good thing for administrators, letting them manage the shadow copies at a central point and freeing up storage space on the file server. (Another plus is that although Shadow Copies of Shared Folders can only be enabled on a computer running Windows Server 2003, DPM can create shadow copies for file servers running Windows 2000 Server as well.)

To redirect the target for shadow copies on the client computer, DPM has its own shadow copy client that you install on client computers, which modifies the Windows shadow copy client. When the user opens the Previous Versions interface for a folder or file, DPM's shadow copy client looks at the shadow copies on the DPM server (provided that there are no shadow copies available on the file server).

What does this mean for end users? Absolutely nothing! There is a lot of useful documentation already written on how users can recover documents from shadow copies, and the instructions are the same whether the document will be recovered from a file server or from the DPM server.

Some good instructions for end users: