christina.constantinou (1/7/2013)Ok cool, will do. We're currently running the database in Simple recovery mode for a number of reasons, but it's good for a heads-up as we have many and various recovery models for different databases.
With regards to your second point - do you mean the DPM recovery points?
Thanks
Simple actually will make your life easier, then, I'm using DPM ONLY for DBs in Simple Recovery, and haven't had issues with my Full Recovery DBs since (they get backed up via SQL jobs to disk, then DPM grabs those files.)
DPM gives you the ability to create "recovery points," which are times that you could recover your data to. Using a plain file backup as an example, I could set up DPM to create hourly recovery points (RP) of that file. So if someone deleted it at 11:15am, I could recover from the 11:00am RP and go on about my day. With items such as SQL DBs, DPM has two backup mechanisms: Recovery Points and Express Full Backups (EFB)
As best I can see it, think of the EFB as a full database backup, and a RP as a Differential backup. BUT because of the way DPM stores these backups, if you want to restore only the DB files (the MDF / LDF) you can NOT use the Differential backups, only the EFB. If you restore to an SQL Instance (the DB will be attached, and you can choose to have it operational and available, or left in a Recovering state,) you can choose one of your RPs to recover.
Basically, you should check with whoever is in charge of the DPM (if it's you, look over the settings for your DB backups) and make sure it's set to create EFBs at your chosen recovery times (your "snapshots.") Then you should be able to recover to your SLAs as expected.
Of course, don't take my word for all of this, TEST, TEST, TEST, and research elsewhere as well (the Technet forums on DPM are excellent!)
Jason