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Using Pre-Backup and Post-Backup Scripts in DPM

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You can configure DPM to run scripts before (pre) and after (post) each DPM backup job. This can used to prepare the data source for backup and also to start a service again after backup. 

On each agent machine, in the DPM folder under \DPM\Scripting there is a file named ScriptingConfig.xml. This is the file that you use to configure pre-backup scripts and post-backup scripts. These scripts are run with the local system account. The script needs to be configured on each agent, or you could use some find of deployment system to deploy the configuration file to multiple machines.

In my test I simply stopped the print spooler (spooler) service and started it again after backup. I created two CMD files in C:\Scripts. The files include “net start spooler” and “net stop spooler”. My test machine ScriptConfig.xml looks like this (click to view the full image):

The BackupCommandLine lines is for command-line parameters to be passed to the script. The DataSourceName attribute is the data source volume or name, for example a storage group name in Exchange.

I have not found a good way to see if the pre-backup and post-backup script ran successfully. But if you have Operations Manager in your environment, you can configure your scripts to echo to event viewer. Then you can use the missing event monitor to make sure the scripts are run successfully every X minute, for example if you do a backup every hour, then you want an event every hour too.

Remember to include your scripts in your disaster recovery plan.

 

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