Getting Access to Data Protection Manager (DPM)

data protection manager

So, I have local administrator and domain administrator rights, yet I cannot successfully open Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2010 (DPM) on my server. I searched the web and could not find a good answer to this problem. Since the error seemed to be a SQL Server error, my searches kept bringing me back to adding myself with DBA rights to the underlying DPM database using SQL Server Management Studio. I did this, but it did not resolve the error message. What could be wrong?

I opened up Computer Manager and while looking around spotted the problem. Here is the detailed solution:

  1. Open Computer Manager:
    • Run Control Panel | Administrator Tools | Computer Manager
    • Expand Local Users and Groups | Groups
    • Scroll down and find “DPMDBAdministrators”
  2. Add yourself as a member:
    • Double click the “DPMDBAdministrators” group
    • Click the Add button
    • Enter your user login information
    • Click the OK button
    • Click the OK button to close the properties dialog
  3. Test your new rights:
    • Logout of the server.
    • Log back into the server.
      (Note: group rights are parsed on login, so you must logout and login)
    • Run DPM and validate that the application opens without errors

Once I added myself to the appropriate security group, the application worked fine. I could move on to dealing with the backups, which was my original scope.