Virtualization: HYPER-V & DPM 2010 ITEM LEVEL RECOVERY

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With the release of Data Protection Manager 2010, DPM adds significant scalability, reliability, and manageability enhancements such as:

• Up to 100 servers, 1000 laptops, or 2000 databases protected by a single DPM server

• Significant auto-protection, auto-healing, and reduced alerting for a more “fire and forget” experience

• Enhanced disaster recovery options for long-distance data protection and business continuity initiatives

Of course DPM 2010 offers key new capabilities when used with Hyper-V R2 such as:

• Protection of Live Migration-enabled servers running on CSV in Hyper-V R2

• Flexibility to protect virtual machines from Windows guests or from the hypervisor host

• Ability to restore virtual machines to an alternative host

• Host-based backups will now enable item level recovery (ILR) from within the VHD

I’d like to focus on the last item, Item Level Recovery. Item Level Recovery is an aptly titled feature that allows you to restore individual items. However, this very powerful feature is subtly hidden right in front of you so I thought it would be good to point this out. A few of us spent a long time looking for this feature before consulting the DPM team… J

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DPM 2010: Item Level Recovery

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To access DPM 2010 Item Level Recovery…

1. Launch DPM 2010

2. Select Recovery

3. Under the Recoverable Data, select the VM from which you wish to recover data

4. Choose the date and time for a point in time recovery

5. Under Recoverable Item is where Item Level Recovery is located (this is where the magic happens…)

a. If you right-click on this item, you’ll be presented with the Recovery dialog. The Recovery dialog will step you through restoring the entire backup, not the Item Level Recovery.

b. To reach the Item Level Recovery, DOUBLE-CLICK on the Recoverable Item and wait a few seconds. You will then be presented with a list of available files for recovery. Alternatively, you can search to find a specific file for recovery.

Once you know the trick (double-clicking on the recoverable item for ILR) you’re good, but it’s not easily discoverable and this functionality is very powerful. So powerful that you don’t want to miss it and you’ll want to show this to customers. Finally, we’ve spoken with the DPM team and they’re looking at ways to make this feature more discoverable. J

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