Exclude data from DPM protection

THE NEED:

In DPM you may run into scenarios where you are backing up a folder or a volume and there are folders or sub-folders that you actually don’t need  or want to protect. There is a way to “exclude” these from the backup. Before we talk about how to do this lets look at an example of why you would want to do this.

THE EXAMPLE:

Lets say you have a Windows cluster and you are backing up the c volume on one of your nodes in the cluster. This cluster is a Hyper-V cluster and you are protecting the virtual machines in your cluster directly. The C:\ClusterStorage folder on the c volume is where your .VHD’s and other virtual machine data is stored. You do not want to backup this folder because the virtual machines are being protected directly by DPM but you want to continue protecting everything else on the c volume. This is where  being able to exclude the C:\ClusterStorage folder comes into play.

THE SOLUTION:

Here is how you can exclude something from being backed up by DPM. There is a registry key on Windows servers called “FilesNotToBackup”. This key needs to be modified on the protected server with the data you want to exclude from the backup. It is that simple. Now here is how you do this.

Make a registry entry to the FilesNotToBackup list in the registry on the protected server you want to exclude data on. DPM/VSS will honor the FileNotToBackup list.

The path is: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup add a Multi-String (REG_MULTI_SZ) value and place something like: C:\ClusterStorage (or any data you want to exclude from backup) in the Value Data field.

The next time the data is protected it should skip the C:\ClusterStorage (or any data you have selected to exclude from backup).