Content Database removed from protected SharePoint Farm

Question

Hi,
We have a SharePoint 2007 farm protected with DPM 2012. We have removed a content database and now DPM is complaining about it, which is the expected behaviour in order to get noticed of accidentally missing databases. According to several sources, the right
way to get rid of these alerts is to stop protection - retaining data - and reprotecting it using the same parameters, so the DPM agent finds the retained data as a starting point.
However, our farm has about 4Tb allocated and we have less than 1 additional Tb free now in the DPM Pool, so if we stop protection and retain data, DPM will complain about the farm not fitting in that Tb (looks like DPM does not take into account that pertinent
data exists previously when estimating the replica and shadow sizes), so we will not be able to protect the farm again if we stop protection retaining data.
Funny, eh? any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi,
When you stop protection and retain the replica, DPM will move the sharepoint data source into an inactive protection group.  When you re-protect the same sharepoint farm, DPM will first query the inactive protection group to see if a replica exists
for that data source and if so will reuse that replica.  It will then do a consistency check to bring the replica up to date, then resume normal backups. Be sure the use the same recovery goals if you are not adding it back to the same protection group.
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