This document describes how Microsoft deployed
Data Protection Manager to 130+ remote sites. It also includes comparitive data along with best practices. This is version 4 and was released today.
When I was at MMS last month I spoke to one of the Microsoft reps regarding Data Protection Manager, I had already gotten a little news about this last summer from our emerging technologies briefing, but I wanted to know how much is would cost. See, I am the PM on our TCO project and one of the goals is to migrate to folder redirection and offline folders. We currently have a DFS solution in place for the home directories but they are not getting much use, and getting 4500 workstations brimming full of data to offload all that data to network shares will be a major undertaking.
Being able to successfully backup all that data and make it available 99.99% of the time will be two of the requirements for the folder redirection phase. Finding a solution to backup data is not difficult, but we have several hundered developers, their computers average about a 9 month lifecycle and are almost always top of the line. The laptops typically have 60 GB hard drives, their desktops have 250 GB hard drives, they, like almost everyone else, fill up what ever we give them. So finding a backup solution that will be able to backup petabytes of data on a weekly basis is not just a feature, but also another requirement. Disk-to-disk is the obvious solution, tape would be far too slow and expensive. Data Protection Manager uses snap shotting to backup data, which can then be backed up to another media of your choosing.
Another nice feature is that the user can restore their own data. I have used this feature with another solution and it works great. I was at home on the weekend doing some light coding on one of my 2000+ line VBS and made some changes to it. It stopped working and I spent over an hour debugging. Then I did what works best for me when I find myself getting nowhere, I changed gears and did something else, planning on returning to my work after a few minutes. After about three minutes of doing something, I rembered that I could restore a backup from yesterday, I pulled up the interface, clicked a couple things, checked a box, and then in less than five minutes I had it back and working. I lost some work, but at least I was at a point where it was working again and not debugging. This feature is great! Even if you only use it once!
So back to MMS, the rep and I were discussing the product and finally I got to the "So how much is this" part of the conversation. And when he told me I asked him to repeat it, he told me it was $1500 for the server software and then $150 for each server that you backup the data to, and their is no cost for the client machines. So if you take a Dell PowerEdge 2850, 1 2.8 GHz CPU, 4 GB RAM, and 6 x 300 GB hard drives (1.2 TB after RAID 10) it runs about $6200, now you could also attach a PowerVault 221 with another 14 x 300 GB (3.6 TB total minus two drives for parity) hard drives, and I assume you still only need the one license, you have quite a bit of space for backups.
- Dell PowerEdge 2850 configured for max storage with (6) 300 GB drives is $6200
- Dell PowerVault 221 with (14) 300 GB drives is about $15000
- These two combined get you over 4 TB of usable space after parity, formatting and software
- Microsoft Data Protection Manager is $1500 + $150 for the server license
So for a little less than $25000 you get a great backup solution that you set and forget, and after you teach the users how to do their own restores you only need to setup your MOM server to monitor the backups and forget it!
You would still need to determine what to do with your snapshots of data for a complete solution, I would reccomend going with a SAN for this type of solution, and with iSCSI the price of a SAN solution is bound to get very affordable.
Want more info?
Data Protection Manager Technical OverviewDownload the Data Protection Manager Trial SoftwareData Protection Manager Demo