Installing DPM agent on server 2008 R2 host, error 347

When installing DPM agent remotely on Server 2008 R2 hosts error 347 was occurring. I tried to install the agent manually but received a different error, “Data Protection Manager Setup. Could not load the setup launch screen. Please contact Microsoft product support”.

Solution: It turns out that server 2008 R2 hosts need to have vcredist_x64 installed first.

If you used the default installation path on the DPM host, you can find the vcredist_x64.exe at this location: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\DPM\DPM\ProtectionAgents\AC\4.1.3313.0\amd64\vcredist_x64.exe"

After installing this and ensuring the host firewall was disabled the remote agent installed perfectly.

Setup has detected that the installation of Reporting Services is not correctly configured or no instance of Reporting Services is linked to MSSQLSERVER, installing Microsoft DPM

Problem: 

Error: Setup has detected that the installation of Reporting Services is not correctly configured or no instance of Reporting Services is linked to MSSQLSERVER of SQL Server.

I was trying to install Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2012 SP1 and connect it to a newly setup remote SQL 2012 server and received an error about the Reporting Services not being properly linked to the SQL 2012 server.

Solution: I wasted a good few hours on this, trying to reconfigure reporting servers with no progress. I finally stumbled upon this post of the exact same error. Thanks to user RH_Av for his helpful post.

My error was assuming that the DPM install would be smart enough to know that the default instance should be used, and that it has reporting services installed and configured.

The solution was to enter the SERVERNAME/INSTANCE, not just the SERVERNAME. I despise stupid things, and this was something Microsoft should fix. It should always check the default SQL instance. duh. Anyways, problem solved!

Dell Poweredge firmware update failed on hard drives

Problem: I recently was preparing my Dell Poweredge R715 servers for Windows Server 2012 and figured I should grab the Dell Server Update utility and perform all necessary firmware updates.

The update succeeded for most items, but failed on the hard drives. Actually one of the three internal drives succeeded (AS08) but the other two were left at the old revision (AS02). What I didn't realize immediately (because the updates were performed remotely) was that this caused the RAID container to enter a degraded state. Unfortunately the upgraded drive wouldn't firmware update using either the Dell utility (due to the degraded state of the container), nor could I rebuild the drive using Dell's server manager, as the option just didn't exist (due to the differing revisions perhaps?).

Solution: With some googling I found this posting. Thanks to user AGAG70 for the tip to use the free MegaRAID Storage Manager utility from LSI here. I downloaded the .zip file. Extracted it on the host server, performed a custom install and chose the "install components to manage this local server" (or something to that extent). Once installed I ran the software, selected the Physical tab and could see the drive that was degraded. I right clicked it and told it to rebuild. It looks like this utility can do firmware updates as well, but I think I'll try the Dell server utility again once the container is fully functional.