One of the many new features in DPM2012 is the ability to use Generic Data Source Support where application owners can provide VSS support so Data Protection Manager can make a backup of the application, Microsoft have provided a writer for VMM 2012 that protect the database, hopefully more complex applications can be backed up this way in the future imagine having a writer for Biztalk that will protect all needed items , or Oracle / Domino and other 3rd party applications.

For a license point of view i dont know if it requre a enterprise ML or a standard one so protection VMM wouldnt require a Enterprise ML for SQL , but time will tell on that one.

Microsoft have provided a new VSS writer for Virtual Machine Manager 2012 that Data Protection Manager can use

So on our protection group we can select the VMM Express Writer

Setup the protection group

And as we are used to with DPM Sucess !

On the Virtual Machine Manager we can see that the VSS writer now calls SQL and create a backup of the configuration database

And before we break anything we verify that the backup is Complete and OK.

Lets detatch

and then delete the database in the filesystem

And verify that the Virtual Machine Manager is “broken”

Go into recovery select latest recovery point for the VMM Backup

And we can see that we want to recover the VirtualManagerDB

And as we have broken the running install we will replace/overwrite with recovery to original instance

And we can see the list of items for the recovery

and 20 seconds later we have Sucess

And in the eventlog we can see that the database have been restored

And SQL agrees

Then we close and open the Virtual Machine Manager interface again.

Sucess ! no overcast clouds are still here , nice detail that VMM recovers without service restart or anything.