Hi everybody!

MS DPM 2007 is a new technology in my company, and so am I to the product. We have a classic Microsoft domain with two DCs, Exchange 2007 and a couple Web/MS SQL servers.

I have deployed DPM one month ago on the domain, and after fixing the various issues I got with the replicas inconsistence and adapting the schedule and retention range to the server storage pool size, I can say the backup system is working correctly (no errors) as of today.

However, there is one problem: we did not attempt to restore from the backups yet, which is a big no-no of course. I'm not sure about the way I should handle this, my main concern being Exchange and the System State of the DCs.

From my understanding, DPM can only protect AND restore data on a server which is part of the same domain as the backup server. If I restore the System State (containing Active Directory) and the Exchange Storage Groups on a testing server, I am afraid it would completely disturb the domain functioning (for example, having two primary DCs on the domain).

I am thinking about building a second DPM server on a testing separate domain which would mirror the replicas and then restore it on testing servers from this new domain. Is it the right way to handle the data recovery testing? How did you do on your domain when you first deployed DPM?

I'd be grateful for any link/documentation or advice.

Thank you in advance for your help!

EDIT:

Two options seem possible so far:

i. Create another DC/Exchange server in the alternate location;

ii. Create a separate domain in the alternate location and setup a trust between this domain and the production one.

The option i is certainly the best but implies setting up a secondary Exchange server, with a dedicated public IP address so that if Exchange #1 dies, we can still send emails with Exchange #2. I don't know how complex this can be and would need to discuss it with my colleagues.

The option ii would only fit the testing purposes. My only question regarding this is: if my production and DPM servers are part of domain A, and there is a trust between domains A and B, can I restore a domain A content to any domain B server?