Michael Phillips Blog

Replica disk threshold exceeded, or Recovery Point Volume threshold exceeded

Great!   Now what?

Well, if you have a new DPM server and not a lot of protection groups created, and you haven’t been protecting anything much, you can just click on the link in the warning message that says “Allocate more disk space for replica…”  That pulls up a pretty window that looks like the one below:

So you go ahead an make the number in the “Replica Volume” field a little bigger, hit ok and go on about your business.  Unless..

Sometimes you may need to go and use DISKPART to manually add space to the volume.  If you try the above method, and you get a failed message instead of success, you are either out of disk space, or it could be that you have more than one disk on your DPM server and one of the disks becomes full.  In order to extend the volume onto another disk, you have to use DISKPART.  DPM (at this version) won’t do it for you.

1. Open a command prompt (run as administrator if you are using a 2008 Server for your DPM server) and type “diskpart”. 
2. Type “List Volume” at the prompt.
3. Right click and “select all” then enter to copy the output to the clipboard
4. Paste it in notepad so you can do a search and search for the Data Source
   1. You should see a line similar to this:

      Volume 534       DPM-Prolo  NTFS   Simple      2050 MB  Healthy
        C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\Volumes\Replica\SQL2.domain.com\ SqlServerWriter\PrologPilot\
      Volume 535       DPM-Prolo  NTFS   Simple      2050 MB  Healthy
        C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\Volumes\DiffArea\SQL2.domain.com\ SqlServerWriter\PrologPilot\
      Volume 536       DPM-Non VSS  NTFS   Simple      1540 MB  Healthy
        C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\Volumes\Replica\quick1.domain.com\Non VSS Datasource Writer\Computer\SystemState\SystemState

   1. The volume number  comes before what it is describing and there are 2 for each protected object.  A Replica volume and a DiffArea.  The replica volume is a copy of the data as it is on the protected member.  The DiffArea is where the recovery points are stored.  The “Non VSS Datasource Writer” is system state in the example.
5. At the DISKPART> prompt type “select volume” and the volume number i.e. : select volume 534
6. If you want to see the details about the disk, you can type detail volume and it gives an output similar to:
   

   DISKPART> detail volume

     Disk ###  Status      Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
     ——–  ———-  ——-  ——-  —  —
   * Disk 2    Online      2560 GB   356 GB   *    *

   Read-only              : No
   Hidden                 : No
   No Default Drive Letter: Yes
   Shadow Copy            : No
   Dismounted             : No
   BitLocker Encrypted    : No

   Volume Capacity        : 1030 MB
   Volume Free Space      :  186 MB

7. In order to increase the space for the Replica volume you would type: EXTEND SIZE=1024 DISK=2.  This would extend the selected volume by 1 GB (1024 MB) on DISK 2. 
8. Now you have to go back in and tell DPM that you extended the volume.  (I believe it may figure it out on its own eventually, but I prefer to get the warning cleared up sooner rather than later, so I go update DPM.

Note:  Each time you use DISKPART, you are likely to see different numbers for the volumes.  I haven’t looked into what that is, but I do know that the system volume is always one of the last in the list.  For that reason I recommend that you always view detail volume after you select it, to make sure you are seeing the volume you intend to work with.

Preinstall DPM Client

If you deploy servers from an image, and you would like to install DPM prior to imaging, you can’t just use the install option from the DPM server.  You CAN install the agent manually, and then configure it later. 

1. Copy the latest agent files from C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\Agents\RA and put them somewhere you can get to them. 
2. Run the DPMAgentInstaller from the appropriate directory,  amd64\1033 or i386\1033 depending on if you have a x64 or x86 system.
3. On the Production server (the machine you want to protect) run %PROGRAMFILES%Microsoft data protection manager\dpm\bin\setdpmserver -dpmservername <DPM server name>
4. On the DPM server, open the DPM Management Shell (the PowerShell interface for DPM) and run attach-productionserver.ps1.  This will ask you for the DPMServer, PSName (the production machine that you want to protect), UserName (an administrator on the client machine), Password, and Domain.
5. Refresh the view in the DPM administrator console.

You should see your production servers listed in the Managemt\Agents view.

System Center Service Manager

When I first heard that Microsoft was going to release a “Service Desk” product, I was actually kind of excited.  I heard about it at MMS in 2006 (I think) and the things that they were planning for their Service Desk product sounded really useful and even a bit forward thinking.  Evidently, what they intended and what they built, wasn’t even close to what the customers wanted, because they scrapped it and started over completely.

Now they are once again trying to get feedback on a Beta version of System Center Service Manager.  We aren’t participating in the Beta this time (too much other stuff going on) so I haven’t kept up with what is happening, but here is a reply to a question someone had about the Service Manager Roadmap:

Thanks very much for your interest in Service Manager – this is great feedback for our team.  We will be adding many features into Beta 2, including OpsMgr integration, Service Maps, Reporting, Self-Service Portal, Knowledge Management, and Problem Management.  We are making infrastruture improvements that will enhance scalability and performance.  We are making usability improvements that will provide a better overall user experience.  We are also going to be providing a tool that will enable form customization, object model extensions, and IT process workflow authoring.
I’ll try to answer some of your other questions below.
1.  We don’t have plans today for a SCE connector. 
2.  We don’t have plans to have built-in integration with DPM – I would love to hear more details on how you think Service Manager could add value.  A step-by-step example would be most helpful
3.  We don’t have plans to directly control task execution in OpsMgr using Change Management workflows, although I believe the underlying Service Manager platform would support many scenarios.  We do have plans to launch the OpsMgr web console from the Service Manager console (on the same machine) — then you can run these tasks from the OpsMgr web console. 
4.  We are not going to have the ability to prevent changes from being applied using the Service Manager change management feature, however we are evaluating functionality to incorporate change windows at a future date.

Service Manager roadmap : Service Manager – General : System Center Service Manager : Microsoft TechNet Forums