DPM 2007 chat session

It was great to "see" so many of you at this morning's chat on DPM 2007 - the room peaked at 90 people, although the gentleman with the Vista question doesn't really count. There was a nice variety of questions. I collected them so we can make sure the documentation addresses the issues people are interested in. I expect there'll be a transcript of the chat session posted later. In the meantime, here's a sample of today's Q&As...

• Q: When will the DPM be available for purchase?
  A: It will be available in the last quarter of 2007.
• Q: After adding a job to backup an SQL database, how do you modify the backup schedule?
  A: You need to go to the Protection pane, select the Protected group and modify protection group. This will launch the same wizard that you used to create the protection group. You can then modify the schedules as required.
• Q: how is it possible to use a SQL Server instance for DPM from a remote server. We have lots of customers with consolidated SQL Servers and they dont want to install an additional SQL Server Instance for DPM
  A: During the setup of DPM, you can specify to use an existing SQL instance. The SQL instance has to be named Microsoft$DPM$. The step by step guide is covered in the setup documentation.
• Q: What does DPM backup in a VHD file? The whole thing or just elements within it (like Exchange and SQL)?
  A: if you protect the data within the guest, then you can protect the individual data sources. for this you need to install the DPM agent on the GUEST itself. however, if you want, you can protect the VMs themselves by installing the agent on the HOST. in this case, the entire VM will be protected. Note that DPM will only perform block level (changes) backups for the VMs.