Upgrading System Center Data Protection Manager (SCDPM) 2012 R2 to System Center Data Protection Manager 2016

Couple of  days ago I did an upgrade of System Center DPM 2012 R2 to System Center DPM 2016 for one of our customers. This was carried out along with a cluster upgrade; Server 2012 R2 to Server 2016. And in here, I will only write about how I upgraded DPM. ;)

Our customer had System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 UR4 and SQL Server 2012 SP1 installed on a HP StorSimple 1650 NAS box running Windows Storage Server 2012 R2. DPM was configured to backup 3 node Server 2012 R2 cluster to disk and online (Azure) backup.

Since the day we upgraded the cluster to 2016, they could not take backups. Why? because DPM 2012 R2 does not support backing up Server 2016. Wow..!! DPM 2012 support matrix So we decided to bring in System Center Data Protection Manager 2016.

This is how I did it.

1. My first concern was the host OS - Windows Storage Server 2012 R2. Whether DPM 2016 can be installed on it or not. Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 is actually a stripped down version of Server 2012 R2 which optimized for file sharing purposes. Some other backup products does not support to be installed on Storage Server 2012 R2. So I took a risk and shutdown the DPM server, removed a single disk from OS mirror (RAID 1) and powered on the server. It's not a recommended method but in case if anything goes wrong when I upgrading the DPM, I still have a disk with original DPM 2012 R2 installation.

2. Next i did was taking a backup of DPM DB. To do it, Open SQL Server Management studio > right click on DPM DB > Tasks > Backup. Add a backup destination and file name, and then select OK to start the backup. It won't take much time.

3. Then I updated the Server OS. Updates took more than 3 hours to install because OS was not updated since 2015. If you have enabled product updates and if you have SQL Server 2012 SP1 or SP2, you'll get SQL SP3 as an optional update. DO NOT install it from there. SQL Server 2012 SP3 is not on the supported SQL versions for DPM 2016. SQL Server Version Compatibility for System Center 2016

4. Next was to install Update Rollup 10 for DPM 2012 R2 before upgrading to DPM 2016. Because it's a mandatory requirement and customer had UR 4 installed. In Windows Update, DPM UR 11 (latest for DPM 2012 R2) showed as an important update. I skipped it and manually downloaded & installed UR 10. Because it's easier to install UR 11 on top of UR 10 if upgrade process needed it rather than going back if something happens with UR 11 when upgrading.

System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 R2 build numbers:

Build Number	KB	Release Date	Description
4.2.1217.0	KB2904687		SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 1
4.2.1226.0	KB2958100		SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 2
4.2.1235.0	KB2963543		SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 2 (re-released)
4.2.1254.0	KB2966014		SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 3
4.2.1273.0	KB3009516	2014 October 28	SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 4
4.2.1292.0	KB3021791	2015 February 10	SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 5
4.2.1297.0	KB3040326	2015 March 5	SCDPM 2012 R2 HOTFIX for Rollup Update 5
4.2.1312.0	KB3030574	2015 April 28	SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 6
4.2.1338.0	KB3065246	2015 July 28	SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 7
4.2.1373.0	KB3086084	2015 October 27	SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 8
4.2.1417.0	KB3112306	2016 January 26	SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 9
4.2.1473.0	KB3143871	2016 May 24	SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 10
4.2.1553.0	KB3162908	2016 August 26	SCDPM 2012 R2 Rollup Update 11

5. Again I took a backup of the DPM DB after installing UR 10.

6. Then started DPM 2016 installation. In below splash screen selected Install Data Protection Manager. There's no option for upgrade.

Setup automatically identified it as an upgrade.

Use stand-alone SQL server option is selected and SQL server name populated automatically. Clicked on Check and Install to install any missing components.

In my case setup installed "HyperVPowershell". It asked for a restart so I restarted the server.

After the restart ran the setup again and proceeded to typing product key.

Clicked Next in Install location. And in Update Opt-In page selected recommended setting.

Upgrade process started.

It took about 10 minutes and Installation was successful.

Then I installed Update Rollup 1 for DPM 2016 from Windows update. (Before installing UR 1 remember to take a backup of DPM DB)

Because of the installation of UR 1 for DPM 2016, old Azure backup agent will not function. Online backups will not run until the agent is upgraded. So I downloaded and upgraded to the latest version 2.0.9052.0

7. Next was to install the DPM Protection Agent on the servers. Even though it showed as update available clicking the link gave an error because servers does not have any DPM agents. Reason: all cluster nodes have freshly installed Server 2016.

So I installed agent manually to all 3 cluster nodes. 

You can find DPM agent inside
C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\DPM\DPM\ProtectionAgents\RA\5.0.158.0. You just have to copy the correct version of the agent folder (amd64 in my case) to the servers > Open elevated command prompt and run DPMAgentInstaller_x64.exe <DPM-servername>. It will install the agent.

Few minutes after installing agent in all 3 servers, again I clicked "Update Available" in DPM console. Then DPM Server started to communicate with the agents.

8. Finally I wanted to check whether backups are working fine. Because of the agent installation and backup schedules not ran for 1-2 weeks, error popped up saying need to do a consistency check. So I selected some VMs and tested. all went well. Azure backup also working without issues.

All I have to do is plug in the removed disk from the server and rebuild the RAID.

Hope this post will help you in some way!