Microsoft Windows Admin Center is a web based App working in your modern browser like Edge or Chrome to manage your datacenter infrastructure. You can download it here
You can manage Windows Servers, Windows10 Desktops, Clusters, Hyperconverged Clusters, Storage Spaces Direct and more in a Hybrid environment and that’s what I like.
My Servers can be on-premises or in the Cloud like Azure and will manage them with Windows Admin Center.
Microsoft Products for Backup – Restore -DR, we have:
Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager
Microsoft Azure Backup
Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (DR)
1. Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM)
You can install Microsoft SCDPM on different solutions, like:
As a physical standalone server
As a Hyper-V virtual machine
As a Windows virtual machine in VMWare
As an Azure virtual machine
If you don’t want to manage hardware like a physical Server, you can virtualize your DPM Server on-Premises on Hyper-V or VMware but you can also install DPM into the Cloud as an Azure VM.
Before you begin you should know what Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager support and can protect by Backup. Here you find the highlights.
For Customers there are different installation scenarios possible :
You already have DPM Installed for years but you have to renew the hardware.
A complete New Installation of System Center Data Protection Manager 2019
Upgrade existing System Center DPM solution.
For the first bulletpoint, when you behind with Upgrading to the latest System Center DPM 2019 and you are still using DPM 2012 R2 for example with a SQL 2012 Database on old hardware, you have to follow a work flow.
When you installed Windows Server 2019 on your new hardware, you have to install DPM 2012 R2 and the same SQL version as before and then restore the latest DPM 2012 R2 database of your old hardware. When that’s done you can proceed with upgrading to DPM 2016 and with the right SQL version. You can’t upgrade from DPM 2012 R2 straight to DPM 2019. Here you can read more about Upgrading your System Center DPM Solution
Microsoft MVP @CHARBELNEMNOM :
He wrote this blogpostwhich can help you out with the installation of System Center DPM 2019.
The third bullitpoint, is upgrading your existing DPM Backup Solution. Important is that you have a Backup of the DPM database on a other Server or storage then the Server your are going to Upgrade. You must have a rollback scenario if something went wrong. Read more about Upgrade path of System Center DPM
2. Microsoft Azure Backup
Use Azure Backup to protect the data for on-premises servers, virtual machines, virtualized workloads, SQL server, SharePoint server, and more. Because this is a Microsoft Cloud Service, you don’t have to buy expensive hardware like Physical Servers, Storage, Tape Library, you just pay for what you are using in Azure, Here you find the Microsoft Azure Calculator to calculate your Backup costs.
First you have to create a Recovery Services Vault :
Click on Review + Create a Recovery Services Vault.
Site Recovery helps ensure business continuity by keeping business apps and workloads running during outages. Site Recovery replicates workloads running on physical and virtual machines (VMs) from a primary site to a secondary location. When an outage occurs at your primary site, you fail over to secondary location, and access apps from there. After the primary location is running again, you can fail back to it.
SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU2 and SQL Server 2014 have built in capability to back up to Windows Azure storage. The SQL Server Backup to Windows Azure tool provides the same functionality for previous versions of SQL Server. It can also be used to provide encryption and compression for your backups.
Using the 3-step wizard, you can specify a rule or set of rules that are applied to any SQL Server backup. One example of a rule could be to redirect all local backups to the specified Windows Azure storage. Another example of a rule would be to use compression or encryption for backups stored in a specific location.
Once you configure the rules, these rules are applied to SQL Server Backup files. If the rule is set to use a Windows Azure storage account, the tool redirects the backups to the specified Windows Azure storage account, but leaves a stub file in the local storage with metadata information to be used during restore.
Benefits:
Support for backups to Windows Azure Storage for SQL Server versions that do not have the built-in capability. Using Windows Azure storage for your backups has several benefits, such as providing off-site storage for disaster recovery, accessibility regardless of location, etc. For more information, see SQL Server Backup and Restore with Windows Azure.
Encryption support for SQL Server versions that do not have the built in capability. Currently only SQL Server 2014 has encryption support.
Compression support for SQL Server versions that do not have the built in capability. Currently, SQL Server 2008 supports compression in Enterprise edition only, but SQL Server 2008 R2 and later, encryption is supported on Enterprise and Standard editions.
SQL Server and Operating Systems Support:
This tool is supported on SQL Server 2005 or later, and Operating System versions: Windows Server 2008 or later for Servers, and Windows 7 or later for Client Operating Systems.
With Microsoft Azure Backup, you can protect application workloads such as Hyper-V VMs, Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange and Windows clients to:
– Disk (D2D), giving high RTOs for tier 1 workloads
– Azure (D2D2C) for long term retention.
And, you can manage the protection of various protected entities (servers and clients) from a single on-premises user interface.
You can deploy Microsoft Azure Backup server as:
– A physical standalone server.
– A Hyper-V virtual machine – You can run DPM as a virtual machine hosted on an on-premises Hyper-V host server, to back up on-premises data.
– A Windows virtual machine in VMWare – You can deploy DPM to provide protection for Microsoft workloads running on Windows virtual machines in VMWare. In this scenario DPM can be deployed as a physical standalone server, as a Hyper-V virtual machine, or as a Windows virtual machine in VMWare.
– An Azure virtual machine – You can run DPM as a virtual machine in Azure to back up cloud workloads running as Azure virtual machines.
With Microsoft Azure Backup, you can protect application workloads such as Hyper-V VMs, Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange and Windows clients to:
– Disk (D2D), giving high RTOs for tier 1 workloads
– Azure (D2D2C) for long term retention.
And, you can manage the protection of various protected entities (servers and clients) from a single on-premises user interface.
You can deploy Microsoft Azure Backup server as:
– A physical standalone server.
– A Hyper-V virtual machine – You can run DPM as a virtual machine hosted on an on-premises Hyper-V host server, to back up on-premises data.
– A Windows virtual machine in VMWare – You can deploy DPM to provide protection for Microsoft workloads running on Windows virtual machines in VMWare. In this scenario DPM can be deployed as a physical standalone server, as a Hyper-V virtual machine, or as a Windows virtual machine in VMWare.
– An Azure virtual machine – You can run DPM as a virtual machine in Azure to back up cloud workloads running as Azure virtual machines.
Any developer or IT professional can be productive with Azure. The integrated tools, pre-built templates and managed services make it easier to build and manage enterprise, mobile, Web and Internet of Things (IoT) apps faster, using skills you already have and technologies you already know. Microsoft is also the only vendor positioned as a Leader across Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Application Platform as a Service, and Cloud Storage Services for the second consecutive year.
In today’s world it is all about mobility and Applications. On your work, at School, at Home, and even when you do Sport like biking or running. I think that’s why
Microsoft makes One Platform Windows 10 to get the best experience with Applications on every Device.
Making your own websites is really Easy with Microsoft Azure and is Cool to work with.
To run all those Web Apps in the Cloud you need Storage and capacity to store your data save in the Cloud with high security policies.
Microsoft Azure has all kind of diffenrent Storage in the Cloud for your data.
Microsoft Azure Data and Storage
Learn about Azure Storage, and how to create applications using Azure blobs, tables, queues, and files :
Of course when you have a lot of data, you like to analyze it for the business and make good Reports or Dashboard to
make the right decisions. Microsoft Azure Cloud Services has Data and Analytics :
Microsoft Azure Data and Analytics
Learn to create Hadoop clusters, process big data, develop solutions using streaming or historical data, and analyze the results :
When you are still working on an On-premises datacenter only, Microsoft makes it’s easy to transform your datacenter into Hybrid Cloud Scenarios.
You can think of a Twin Datacenter for your Core Business Applications, or save your longtime protection data into an Azure Backup Vault.
Microsoft Azure Hybrid Integration
Learn how to integrate the enterprise and the cloud with BizTalk Services :
To make those Microsoft Solutions Available for everyone, you need Developers and Developer Environments.
Microsoft Azure Developer Services
Learn how to detect issues, diagnose crashes and track usage of your mobile apps, and web apps hosted anywhere: on Azure or on your own IIS or J2EE servers :
This is a super simple “getting started” experience for deploying single and multi-container Dockerized applications utilizing Azure Resource Manager templates and the new Docker Extension
Microsoft is happy to announce the release of their newest free ebook, Microsoft System Center Data Protection for the Hybrid Cloud (ISBN 9780735695832), by Shreesh Dubey, Vijay Tandra Sistla, Shivam Garg, and Aashish Ramdas; Mitch Tulloch, Series Editor.
If you are responsible for architecting and designing the backup strategy for your organization, especially if you’re looking for ways to incorporate cloud backup into your business continuity scenarios, this book is for you. With the increasing trends in virtualization as well as the move to the pubic cloud, IT organizations are headed toward a world where data and applications run in on-premises private clouds as well as in the public cloud. This has key implications for data protection strategy, and it is important to choose the solution that provides the same level of data protection you have afforded so far while allowing you to harness the power of the public cloud.
This book covers improvements added in DPM 2012 R2 as well as the integration with Microsoft Azure Backup service
High Level Design System Center 2012 R2 Backup with Azure
In this fast Hybrid Cloud world where a lot is changing, backing up your data is important for Enterprise organisations.
With System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager you can do a lot. I made a High Level Design of our
System Center 2012 R2 DPM POD’s ( Dell PowerEdge R620 Server with MD1200 SAS Storage Enclosures ).
For the first time we skipped to buy a Tape Library for long time protection, we now backup to Microsoft Azure Backup Vault storage for long time protection. So we have no tape management any more.
When you have more System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager Servers in your Datacenter, you can think of Scale-Outprotection where you are more flexibel in your Datacenter to save your data.
System Center Data Protection Manager(DPM) offers backup to Azure for long term protection by leveraging Azure Backup. The first step in configuring DPM-A (DPM backup to Azure) is to register the DPM server to the Azure Backup vault. This article explains how the registration process is greatly simplified and enhanced with Update rollup UR4 for DPM.
Till Update Rollup 3 (UR3), users were required to generate a self-signed certificate and upload this certificate to the backup vault through the portal. During the registration process, the certificate was used to register the server to the backup vault. While this process ensured security, it was a bit overwhelming.
With UR4, registration of the DPM server to the Azure Backup vault is simplified without compromising on the security by using a concept called “vault credential”. A vault credential is an authentication entity that can be downloaded from the backup vault on the portal. The vault credential is valid for 48 hours from the downloaded time and can only be used during the registration process to authenticate the server with the backup vault.
Cloud and Datacenter Management Blog 