I am disappointed to find that the newly released Update Rollup 5 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager agent install requires a restart. It would seem that in today's age of the Internet that Microsoft could figure out how to install agents without requiring a restart likes it does with Windows Server 2003 and previous versions of DPM i.e. DPM 2012 SP1. Restarting hundreds of servers is not practical. Instead of adding features that support Azure and ultimately Microsoft's pocketbook, how about adding features that support the end user trying to get the product installed in the first place?

Hi,

The last three DPM updates had code changes to the DPMFilter.sys driver which tracks block level changes for protected data sources.  The DPMFilter cannot be unloaded / patched and reloaded without loosing block level changes which would require a forced consistency check for all data sources.  The decision was made to require the reboot instead of forcing a consistency check for all data sources which could be more disruptive especially for multi-terabyte file servers. 

Thanks Mike. Knowing the reasoning behind the decision to require a restart is beneficial. It's nothing that we can't work around, just annoying after being used to the "no restart needed". We've found the latest releases to be very stable in our environment and that's more important than anything else! 

• Marked as answer by Jarens 14 hours 48 minutes ago

Thanks Mike. Knowing the reasoning behind the decision to require a restart is beneficial. It's nothing that we can't work around, just annoying after being used to the "no restart needed". We've found the latest releases to be very stable in our environment and that's more important than anything else! 

• Marked as answer by Jarens Thursday, February 12, 2015 9:20 PM

Thanks Mike. Knowing the reasoning behind the decision to require a restart is beneficial. It's nothing that we can't work around, just annoying after being used to the "no restart needed". We've found the latest releases to be very stable in our environment and that's more important than anything else! 

• Marked as answer by Jarens Thursday, February 12, 2015 9:20 PM

Hi Mike! Could you please allow us to decide which method do we prefer? I prefer to do a CC but not to restart a number of servers.

Please, implement a switch in UR6 so we can go through CC instead of restart if we like so, because we just updated to UR4 and will NOT go t

Hotfix for known issue with Update Rollup 5 for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=45914&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all

I rather do a CC check than reboot (most of) my servers.

Is it not possible to cancel the "restart pending" status and force DPM to do a CC check instead? Can this maybe done by just unloading the DPM filter, deleting the dpm filter files in System Volume Information and loading the filter again?

I have a lot of hosts which I can not reboot whithout a lot of hassle/planning but a CC check would be no problem at all. This really needs to be taken into consideration in future updates: Give the customer a choice to either reboot or CC check. Thanks!

Marcus

Hi,

If you know you cannot reboot a server for awhile then remain running on the current agent by not applying the updated agent.   Jobs will continue to run, it's just you will not benefit from the fixes incorporated in the updated agent.

I would love to do just that but DPM will not let me select any virtual machine for backup before I reboot...

Hi,

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say.  Now that you have already updated the agent, yes, a reboot is required.  However, in the future, don't update the agent on machines that cannot be rebooted right away.  yes, it will say update available, but jobs will continue to run using the down level agent even if you don't update it.