DPM licensing quantity

Question

In the process of purchasing System center licensing for our Hyper V environment.

Current setup is 6 Hyper V hosts all licensed with Windows Datacenter with 80 guests (Microsoft servers) spread across.

So far we are getting System Center server datacenter but I am unsure if we require anything else for the guest backups? Do we need to purchase agents?

Answer 1

Hi,

To protect your Hyper-V environment, you will require Data Protection Manager (DPM) along with its protection agents. The protection agents need to be installed on all the guest virtual machines that you want to back up using DPM. Therefore, you will need to purchase separate protection agents for each guest virtual machine. In this case, you have 80 virtual machines. You can purchase protection agent licenses individually or through the System Center Datacenter licensing model, which includes protection agents for an unlimited number of virtual machines on a physical host.

It is important to note that you also need to have a SQL Server instance installed and running to use for the DPM database, which can either be collocated on the DPM server or remote. Additionally, you will need dedicated disk space for DPM data storage.

I hope this information helps in planning your DPM deployment and licensing for your Hyper-V environment. Good luck!

References:

• Preparing your environment for System Center Data Protection Manager: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center/dpm/prepare-environment-for-dpm
• DPM Protection Matrix: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/system-center/dpm/dpm-protection-matrix