If you have a protected workgroup computer in your System Center Data Protection Manager environment and you forget or you don’t want to check the box Password never expires for the synchronization account for DPM, then you will probably get this error cca. 42 days after you configured your Workgroup server for backup with SC DPM.
Description: Unable to contact DPM protection agent.
The protection agent operation failed because it could not access the protection agent on YOURPROTECTEDDPMSERVER. YOURPROTECTEDDPMSERVER may be running DPM, or the DPM protection agent may have been installed by another DPM server
In the Event Viewer on the protected server running the DPM agent I noticed a bunch of event id 85.
Event Type: Error
Event Source: DPMRA
Event Category: None
Event ID: 85
Date: 2011-01-15
Time: 13:30:38
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer: YOURPROTECTEDDPMSERVER
Description:
A DPM agent failed to communicate with the DPM service on YOURDPMSERVER because of a communication error. Make sure that YOURDPMSERVER is remotely accessible from the computer running the DPM agent. If a firewall is enabled on YOURDPMSERVER, make sure that it is not blocking requests from the computer running the DPM agent (Error code: 0x800706ba, full name: YOURDPMSERVER).
The problem is that the password for the local account on the protected server has expired and the account has the box next to User must change password at next logon checked. You will have to execute the following commands on the protected server and on the DPM server:
– on the protected server:
SetDpmServer.exe -dpmServerName YOURDPMSERVER -isNonDomainServer -updatePassword
Be careful to use either the FQDN or the name of your DPM server (it has to be the same name that you used when you configured this the first time), otherwise you will get an error stating that this computer is not protected as a workgroup computer.
– on the DPM server
Update-NonDomainServerInfo -PSName YOURPROTECTEDDPMSERVER -dpmServerName YOURDPMSERVER