As you will know by now, the DPM product team has released the DPM 2010 Release candidate. In this post I will show you how to upgrade to current DPM server to this latest release.

First step is to download the RC from: http://connect.microsoft.com/site840/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=26452

While you are downloading the Zip file it is probably a good idea to make a backup of your current DPM database. Run “DPMBACKUp.exe –db” from the DPM install path to make a  backup of your database and store it in the “%DPMinstall path%\Volumes\ShadowCopy\Database Backups” directory.

When you are done downloading the 2 GB Zip file, just unpack and start the “Setup.exe” from the DPM_V3_RC Directory. Choose “install Data Protection Manager”

Accept the familiar license terms.

Just click next in the setup wizard while taking note of the warning.

Well what do you know I am missing a prereq, fortunately a  nice little link is provided to provide me with the hotfix I need.

I Install hotfix kb975759 and restart the DPM server and repeat the previous steps to get to the prerequisites checker and… all is well now.

So now we are ready to do some upgrading, take note of the next screen where the upgrade process tells us what the name of the SQL instance is we are going to use( with a local install of SQL this should be a new name) MSDPM2010RCEVAL

Yep, another SQL instance. Off course we can clean up the unused instances when we are done upgrading.

From here it is pretty much self-explanatory, so I will not comment on this.

And there you have it, Upgraded to RC!

In the last screen the upgrade process tells us the result and the firewall exceptions that have been made. Also a bit about configuring SSL for reporting services.

Data Protection Manager has been successfully upgraded.

Please click on the link to check for the latest DPM updates:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=47715

 DPM Setup has created the following firewall exceptions:

                - Exception for DCOM communication on port 135 (TCP and UDP) in the domain profile.

                - Exception for Msdpm.exe in the domain profile.

                - Exception for DPMRA.exe in the domain profile.

DPM Setup has not configured Reporting Services to use Secure Sockets Layer. For more information on how to configure the Report Server for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections, see Configuring Report Server for Secure Sockets Layer (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=178289)

By now it is a good idea to restart the DPM box, upgrade your agents and do a consistency check for your Protection groups.

Good Luck