Mastering: System Center Data Protection Manager 2007

Chapter 11. Protecting Workstations

Do you think he'll notice we gave him an etch-a-sketch?

—Scott Adams, "Dilbert"

DPM is some seriously cool technology, but it's not the coolest computing technology out there. If you want the coolest computers, you have to go to Hollywood. We want some of the desktop computers we've seen on the silver screen; those things can do anything including backing up an entire secret government database onto a single floppy. That's cool! How is DPM supposed to compete with that?

Unfortunately, in the real world, desktop computers are simply familiar, everyday tools—just another part of the job. Our business literally is technology, we use computers for everything: maintaining communications, managing projects, developing source code, preparing presentations, editing whitepapers, and even writing the occasional blog post (not to mention books). That's a lot of data, and despite our best efforts as technology experts, not all of it always makes it onto our servers. This can sometimes be a good thing, though; Ryan's SMS package for installing Microsoft Bob really doesn't need to take up valuable space.

You may have come up with the clever idea of using DPM to protect your enterprise desktops— or at the very least, using it to protect key strategic desktops (like the CEO's desktop, or more importantly, the CEO's executive assistant's desktop). The good news is that, yes, you can in fact do this marvelous thing and use DPM to protect workstation data with the same ...