Microsoft DPM Room for Improvement

WM
System Administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

The problem lies with the 2019 version; it's the file system they're using. I used DPM in 2012 at CFMWS, and then we moved to the 2019 version. We integrated it with Backup Exec because DPM didn't offer features like sharing to back up files on the NetApp.

View full review »
Arthur Fan - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Director at MPICorporation

Microsoft DPM could improve if it was available in a public or private cloud.

View full review »
SS
Chief Digitalization Executive at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It would be better if it integrated seamlessly with open source and competitor products. In the next release, I would like to see some data governance frameworks. It should have support features for data integration and data replication like Veeam. Right now, we are also using Veeam for certain scenarios.

View full review »
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft DPM
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft DPM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
RH
Group Assistant, General Manager of IT at CIC

The DPM is pretty good, but when it comes to external devices, you can't back up to the external device. It's a huge drawback because once everything goes down, it goes down fully. We can't take a snapshot and take it outside, which is a problem.

Also, when it comes to recovery, the recovery process doesn't work properly. It doesn't recover. One of our drives failed and when we wanted to recover it from the other drive, it never worked. So, we couldn't recover the data.

Recovery of data if the server goes down, is not very good.

The DPM is good apart from the support services. We were told that the support was no longer in existence, which is why we are looking for another provider.

In the next release, I would like to see backup to external devices, so it can always restore the backup and we can take it externally and store it somewhere that it is off-site and archived. Currently, it does not allow us to do that because it is required to be in one location. 

View full review »
MA
Microsoft Specialist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

To evaluate the solution's abilities and its performance under demanding conditions, it is recommended to carry out a stress test. It would ensure that the current version of the solution can accept a lot of requests at the same time coherently.

View full review »
JB
Senior Consultant at a marketing services firm with 11-50 employees

The issue with the solution is if you have some problems, it's difficult to find the reason for the problem and to troubleshoot the problems with the solution. 

There are so many different things to configure. It can really mess with the settings. In general, more settings need to be possible. You have only a few settings and if you change them for some special configurations, it's very difficult.

It's not so stable from time to time. You have problems occasionally. Sometimes the Microsoft patches for the operating systems might cause issues. However, with this product, the root cause can be tough to find.  

It's not that easy to install.

You can manage this DPM or you can monitor this DPM with Microsoft Operations Manager and so on.

View full review »
JA
DBA, Developer at a government with 201-500 employees

There is a very poor online user community in terms of people blogging about their experiences with DPM. 

I'm on Google all the time, resolving issues. All I ever find is the official Microsoft documentation. While that can be helpful, and that is in many cases, authoritative, it's not the same as having an independent user community who's writing about it. I have to wonder about the product when I don't see a vital external user community in existence.

Every day I have to log in and look at agent alerts and failures that I have to resolve. There are so many different types of agent failures that I have to diagnose pretty much every day due to the fact that the replicas are out of sync with the current state of a file or the VM or something. I'm constantly involved in a lot of hands-on maintenance. They need to change that and potentially make some sort of automated solution to this problem so the workload isn't so heavy for those maintaining the solution.

It's not a set it and forget it kind of solution. Not that anything is. However, it's a lot of labor involved in just keeping the replicas in sync.

One of the things I think would like to be able to use is their cloud storage at the block level so that it's cheaper for a government entity. We want to have replicas in the cloud, however, it's very expensive. They're using the most expensive tier of Azure storage. We would rather just be able to specify that our cloud backups go to Blob based storage for budgetary purposes. I don't believe that's available, but then again, I can't really find that out online due to a lack of a user community.

I would like to maybe have Office 365 backups. I know other vendors offer that however, I don't believe that's available within this solution.

View full review »
RK
M. I. S. Manager at Ruby Mills Ltd

I would say the user-friendliness could be improved because I have found that my colleagues are not finding it very easy to use. I have used it quite well. I was able to do a lot of features within it, but for a frustrated user, it becomes a little user-unfriendly. Also, one issue was if I wanted to restore mail - it's not feasible here.

View full review »
RC
System Analyst at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Additional Hyper-V knowledge would be great. There are some articles online detailing the interaction with hypervisors. Using the built-in tools would speed up some of the normal routine procedures.

View full review »
RK
M. I. S. Manager at Ruby Mills Ltd

The user interface can be improved quite a bit.

Overall, I wouldn't describe the solution as user-friendly. It's not very intuitive.

The issue is that for users who are not interacting with the product regularly, it becomes difficult to trace the various functionality available. The product version that we have does not have View full review »
IH
System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

It needs portability for other vendors. It is good for backing up Microsoft servers, but it doesn't support third-party solutions such as Oracle Database. 

It depends on Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy, especially for Hyper-V, which has a lot of problems. They should enhance the Volume Shadow Copy functionality. 

Its reporting should also be better. Reporting is too weak in DPM.

View full review »
WM
Head of ICT Infrastructure & Security at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Management reporting could be improved.

View full review »
it_user1350732 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at Adalites

They could improve the compatibility and integration with other products and the ability to do file-to file backups of other products. I also find the hard disk aligning quite complicated and that should be simplified. 

View full review »
it_user175563 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

In the areas of disaster recovery.

View full review »
NM
System Administrator with 51-200 employees

The data tagging feature needs improvement. The solution could be a bit more intuitive in certain aspects. 

View full review »
it_user156372 - PeerSpot reviewer
Database Expert with 51-200 employees

Yes: failure of primary; agent resource use.

View full review »
it_user6414 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a tech company with 51-200 employees
• Optimization of fabric administrator cause management problem to arise in backup administrator as it leads to the backup software failure in a manner that cannot be foreseen or anticipated finding backup administrators unawares. • In trying to solve the backup issue, Data Protection Manager involves complex connection of DPMs and VMM serves which may pose a challenge to beginners. View full review »
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft DPM
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft DPM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.