for the product, including end-user self-recovery in certain scenarios. DPM can be
useful in the private cloud, in the protection of the environment. DPM can back up
and protect the Hyper-V servers, the SQL databases that are used by most of the
System Center 2012 components, the management servers running the System Center
infrastructure, and all of the virtual machines running on Hyper-V that are created.
DPM supports backing up at the Hyper-V server level, and that backup request will be
passed by Hyper-V to the virtual machines. That allows the virtual machines to ensure
that information on disk is in a backup-ready state so when the virtual machine is
backed up, the integrity and usability of that backup can be ensured.
I do want to be clear; just because you can back up at the Hyper-V level does not mean
that you should back up only at the Hyper-V level. If you want granular restoration
capabilities of applications like SharePoint, SQL Server, and Exchange, you need to
have the DPM agent installed within the virtual machine and actually be backing up
from the VM directly, to enable DPM to have the knowledge of the application
configuration and data.
System Center 2016 DPM adds support for the backup for VMware VMs in addition to
better leveraging modern storage capabilities such as Storage Spaces Direct and even
protect-shielded VMs. ReFS (Resilient File System) is utilized to streamline the
creation of recovery points by utilizing ReFS cloning, therefore greatly increasing the
number of sources that can be protected per DPM server and reducing the amount of
storage required.
System Center Service Manager
I’ll spend more time on System Center Service Manager (SCSM) in a later chapter, but
think of it as the configuration management database (CMDB) for the entire
infrastructure, which is another ITIL key capability. Service Manager is shown in the
center of the rest of the System Center components for a good reason. It has
connectors into all of the surrounding components, receiving feeds of information
that it consolidates into a single view of everything related to an asset (such as a
computer or person), giving a single point of truth for the entire organization.
Service Manager has capabilities commonly associated with a help desk solution, such
as logging incidents, problems, and change requests, but it also handles change
management and release management in addition to providing a powerful workflow
engine to enable your organization’s processes such as approvals to be replicated in
Service Manager.
The key item that I focus on later is the service catalog, which provides the
organization with the ability to request services, including services for software and
virtual infrastructures. Organizations often have a help desk solution already in place,
but realize that Service Manager is far more than a ticketing system. It can be
implemented and integrated with another ticketing solution, all the while leveraged
for its other powerful capabilities and CMDB functionality.