Today, I decided to install DPM 2007 beta 2 in our virtual lab environment (VI3) at Xylos. I downloaded the x64 version from http://connect.microsoft.com (over 1,3GB) and deployed a new Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 virtual machine with enough storage to hold backups for the lab servers. The lab servers are running Exchange Server 2003 and 2007, SQL 2005 and SharePoint 2007. There is even a Windows Server 2008 server that I use as a Terminal Services gateway so I can include that server in the backups as well.

Before you start the DPM 2007 installation, install Windows Server 2003 SP2 because it is a prerequisite. During installation, DPM 2007 will automatically install the .NET Framework 2.0. After that, the setup wizard will launch. After the Welcome screen further prerequisites will be checked:

PowerShell is required so I installed it while keeping the setup wizard open. After a click on the Check Again button, the Next button became available to continue. The download comes with the SQL 2005 sources and the setup routine can install a SQL Server 2005 instance for DPM called MS$DPMv2Beta2$. You can also select an existing SQL Server 2005 if you wish.

DPM creates a few accounts and you need to specify the password for these accounts:

The installation can then start by installing IIS 6.0 (best to use Windows Server 2003 x64 sources with SP2 integrated), the single instace store filter, Windows PowerShell (already done), SQL 2005 SP2 and in the end DPM 2007 itself:

The installation of DPM failed when creating the databases. After removing DPM, rebooting and retrying the installation, it worked.

DPM creates two shortcuts on the desktop:

When I started the console, I got a message to restart the computer (a bit weird, why not after installation?). After that, the console worked fine. In a few next blog posts, I will describe a bit how DPM works with several different workloads.