DPM–Protecting Exchange (Replica is Inconsistent)

The DPM will not be able to backup the Exchange if the Replica is Inconsistent .

Firstly is to check if the Space Allocated is sufficient in the DPM.  If it’s not then you have to allocate more space or to reduce the short term retention period to gain more space.

I tried to simulate a situation that one of the environment is facing the issue. 

The “Run Eseutil to check data integrity” was checked in the DPM, however the logs in the DPM prompted as “Replica is inconsistent”

All protection group activities for the data source will fail until the replica is synchronized with consistency check.  The error would be 0x800700D8 and a reference to ID 30146.

After some investigation, found that the Eseutil.exe and Ese.dll that are installed in the Exchange is different version from the DPM.

So what I did was to copy the Eseutil.exe and Ese.dll files from the Exchange to the
"<drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\Bin" directory on the Data Protection Manager server

Take note :  One thing to take note is the version of Exchange.  You have to copy the correct version (32-bit or 64-bit) of the Eseutil.exe & Ese.dll to the DPM server.  If have upgraded to the Exchange Service Pack, then you have to copy the latest Eseutil.exe & Ese.dll from the Exchange Server to the DPM directory as mentioned above in green above.

Thank you and hope this helps.  The findings above is from the Technet & Forums.

keynote : DPM, replica inconsistent, replica inconsistent, DPM protecting Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010 replica inconsistent. Error 0x800700D8, ID 30146, Eseutil.exe, Ese.dll. Storage group always “Inconsistent”

DPM–Access denied in Windows Explorer after mountvol in CMD

Here I am login in as a domain user  that is also a member of the of the LOCAL ADMINISTRATORS group in a server. 

I manage to MOUNTVOL and assign a letter K to the volume.  It’s for a site-to-site replica manual transfer.  For those of you that is interested in the site-to-site replica manual transfer, it’s in my blog too .

Before I go further, here’s some short explanation on the UAC from Technet :

To help prevent malicious software from silently installing and causing computer-wide infection, Microsoft developed the UAC feature. Unlike previous versions of Windows, when an administrator logs on to a computer running Windows Server 2008, the user’s full administrator access token is split into two access tokens: a full administrator access token and a standard user access token.

During the logon process, authorization and access control components that identify an administrator are removed, resulting in a standard user access token. The standard user access token is then used to start the desktop, the Explorer.exe process.

Because all applications inherit their access control data from the initial launch of the desktop, they all run as a standard user as well.

After an administrator logs on, the full administrator access token is not invoked until the user attempts to perform an administrative task.

Anyway, if you have the LOCAL ADMINISTRATOR’s password you can go through the steps mentioned earlier in my blog.  However, in some situation there’s no way to have the LOCAL ADMINISTRATOR’s password. I’m already assigned as part of the local administrators group.

So after some snooping around and found that the issue is with the User Access Control (UAC).

So what I did is to edit the registry of the DPM server :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Change the EnableLUA from 1 to 0

Reboot the server.

Login with the user that is part of the Local Administrators Group.

Perform the steps to MOUNTVOL & then from the Windows Explorer, you can be able to access the volume with the letter assigned.  Copy the necessary data out to external drive to transport out to second site and copy the data from the external drive to the secondary DPM server.

More information on the UAC is in here.

Please note : That should make admins run as admins all of the time. This is dangerous and I would recommend that you enable this feature back on for day to day use.

Thank you & hope this helps you .

keynote : Windows Explorer access denied after MOUNTVOL, mountvol for DPM, replica, manual transfer of site to site, DPM site to site manual data transfer

DPM–More of BMR (Error 0x80070057)

When doing the restoration for the BMR, it’s very important to note the following :

You can't do an image restore unless ALL the drives are exactly as they were. Meaning when I was using USB drive to initiate the recovery, it was counting that as a drive. So no go on using a jump drive to initiate the Windows Recovery Environment. That was what was the "the parameter is incorrect; 0x80070057" error.

So I figured a workaround.  Once you have selected the network driver to be installed and also the shared network drive where the DPM recovery image is stored, you then eject the thumb drive, before you click FINISH in the end for the restoration process.  That will do the trick.

Hope this helps you .

keywords : The parameter is incorrect, error 0x800700. The system image restore failed,

DPM–Backing Up Hyper-V (Consistency Check Error)

Today I had an issue of backing up the Hyper-V through the DPM 2010.  The agent is installed into the Hyper-V host.  There’s also ample of space in the drive where the VHDs resides.  The same drive also caters for the snap shots. 

When I execute the Consistency Check it states that DPM failed to synchronize changes for Microsoft Hyper-V \Backup Using Child Partition Snapshots\VMServername on Hyper-VServerName because the snapshot volume did not have sufficient storage space to hold the churn on the protected computer (ID 30115 Details : VSSError : Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data. (0x08004231F))

Status is Failed.

Therefore I carried out the steps below to have it working.

Step 1 (to be perform in Hyper-V Host)

• Open the the Registry.
• Add in the key :
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\Agent\UseSystemSoftwareProvider

 

Step 2 (to be perform in the DPM Server)

• From the Command prompt (Run as Administrator), key in the command to stop the DPM and restart the DPM services.  The command are as follow :
  
  net stop dpmra
  
               then to start the DPM service
  
  net start dpmra
  
  

Perform the Consistency Check once more.  Once it’s completed, then you can Create recovery point for restore.

Thank you and hope it helps you.

keywords : consistency check error, (ID 30115 Details : VSSError : Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data. (0x08004231F)), DPM backing up Hyper-V error,

DPM – What is Initial Store ?

When you use the DPM to backup a Hyper-V Server, there’s a check box for Initial Store. What is that … you may wonder.

The initial store contains the security permissions for Hyper-V’s Authorization Manager (AzMan).  This is an xml file located in %systemdrive%\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V\. You only need to perform a restore if this xml file becomes corrupted or is deleted. 

Backing up virtual machines and the initial store are independent. You only need to back up the initial store if you are using the Authorization Manager in Hyper-V and don’t want to lose your settings.

For more information on Hyper-V Authorization Manager visit: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd283076(WS.10).aspx

keywords : azman, Initial store in Hyper-V, DPM 2010, DPM, virtual machines.

How to have Intergration Service working in Linux for Hyper-V

Today I’m going to share with you that you can have Linux install into the Hyper-V.

I’ve here is the Suse Linux 10 installed as a VM in my Hyper-V lab.

Need to take note, that the Network should be installed as Legacy Network Adapter during the provisioning of the Linux VM (if it’s not in the listed as supported Linux version in Hyper-V). Otherwise can use the Synthetic Network Adapter. 

In the version of Suse Linux 10, the Synthetic Network Adapter is use then.

Intergration Services

Once you’ve installed the Linux, you need to install the “Intergration Services”.

You can download it from here.

Download both the files (the Linux_IC_v2.EXE & Linux Integration Components Read Me.pdf)

1. Open Hyper-V Manager

2. In Hyper-V Manager, configure LinuxIC v2.ISO (located in the directory where you extracted the downloaded files) as a physical CD/DVD drive on the virtual machine.

3. As the root user, mount the CD in the virtual machine by issuing the following commands at a shell prompt:

# mkdir /mnt/cdrom

# mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

4. Copy the Linux Integration Components to the virtual machine.

# mkdir /opt/linux_ic_rtm

# cp /mnt/cdrom/* /opt/linux_ic_rtm –R

5. As the root user, run the following command to install the synthetic drivers.

# /opt/linux_ic_rtm/setup.pl drivers

Getting Mouse Working

Next is to get the MOUSE working.

Download the ISO file from here.

1. Download and attach the .ISO file to a Hyper-V guest with the Linux Integration Components already installed.

2. Copy the contents of the .ISO to the desired directory

3. Run setup.pl with the inputdriver argument:

# ./setup.pl inputdriver

You might need to reboot the Linux VM if the mouse is not working.

Thanks to my comrade Kwan Thean Keong for the recommendation.

keywords : Linux, mouse not active in Hyper-V for Linux, Service Intergration for Linux in Hyper-V,

 

More on Bare Metal Restore (DPM 2010)

I’ve some query whether the DPM 2010 (BMR features) can be able to restore Physical to another physical which is not similar specs.

DPM 2010 utilizes Windows backup feature for both SystemState and BMR backups. The support for restoring to dissimilar hardware is defined by Windows and generally speaking, it not supported.  

BMR for Windows 2003 is only possible by using the DPM System Recovery Tool (SRT) a separate installable product that shipped on the DPM 2007 and DPM 2010 installation media.

In either case, nothing is preventing you from restoring to dissimilar hardware, but as noted it isn't supported and may not work 100% of the time (this most probably due to the different hardware drivers, which you may have to reinstall manually) .

For Windows 2003, it has been suggested is the right one like using the SRT for BMR backups. But for Windows 2008 and later OS versions, You can safely rely on the Windows Backup to restore on alternate hardware as well, it is much reliable than earlier Windows 2003 BMR / ASR (another method of System State Backup) recovery.

But some important points note here are, the recovery target has to have higher disk configuration than the backed-up one. If you are restoring a 32 Bit OS backup then you need to use 32 bit Setup/Install media/WINRE media(and same for 64 bit as well).

(WINRE stands for – Windows Recovery Environment)

To be able able to do successful BMR recovery, you have to backup all critical volumes using -allcritical options of Windows backup (DPM uses this option so all DPM BMR backups are BMR able, but it will not have data volumes backup).

Please note that A DPM server cannot protect itself for BMR.

Abstracts from Forum & TechNet

It’s not so straight forward however it’s not impossible.

keywords : BMR , Bare Metal Restore, DPM 2010, Restore from Physical to Virtual