Connecting Untrusted or Workgroup Computer to System Center Data Protection Manager 2012

The documentation for this on the Microsoft website is slightly unloved. At the time of writing it was last updated January 15, 2013 and has the text:

[This topic is pre-release documentation and is subject to change in future releases. Blank topics are included as placeholders.]

So here are my concise install steps.

1. Copy the protection agent files from the DPM server to the untrusted server. Ensure that you get the correct “bitness” and the latest agent:
:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 DPM\DPM\ProtectionAgents\RA\\

So in my environment:

D:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\DPM\DPM\ProtectionAgents\RA\4.1.3313.0\i386
and I copied to: C:\DPM on the untrusted computer

2. Install the agent on the untrusted computer by running the .exe









3. After install is complete start an elevated command prompt and run the following:

CD c:\Program Files\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\bin
SetDpmServer.exe –dpmServerName MYDPMSERVER.DOMAIN.local -isNonDomainServer -userName DPMAdmin -productionServerDnsSuffix DOMAIN.local

This syntax is as follows:
SetDpmServer.exe The program you are running
–dpmServerName he DPM server this untrusted machine will connect to
–isNonDomainServer Tells the DPMAgent that this is not domain joined
–userName The New user that will be created on the untrusted machine for running backups
–productionServerDnsSuffix Uhhh – The DNS Suffix of the Production Server……


4. On pressing return you will be prompted twice for a password, make a note of this as you will need it when attaching the agent to the DPM server (step XXXXXX)
The screen should then resemble something like this:



5.  If you check in Users on the untrusted machine you should see the following:



The DPM user has the following group membership:




6. You are now ready to attach the untrusted machine in DPM.







7. As you can see in my environment the Agent version is older than all of the Trusted machines, in DPM2010 this update would be in the install folder and all would be good, for some reason its not there on the 2012 install.



8. The update in this case is Update Rollup 2 for System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2802159
Which can be applied by Windows Update on the untrusted machine.

Additional information 12/12/2013
I'm revisiting this post today as I got hit by a little issue on the server this was installed on. Once the user is created ensure you set the password to not expire and for the user not able to change the password (or whatever password policy you have):

Without this you will get the following error in the DPM management console: