PowerProtect Data Manager 19.13 Storage Direct User Guide

About the PowerProtect agent service

The PowerProtect agent service is a REST API based service that is installed by the application agent on the application host. The agent service provides services and APIs for discovery, protection, restore, instant access, and other related operations. The PowerProtect Data Manager uses the agent service to provide integrated data protection for the application assets.

This section uses <agent_service_installation_location> to represent the PowerProtect agent service installation directory. By default, the agent service installation location is C:\Program Files\DPSAPPS\AgentService on Windows and /opt/dpsapps/agentsvc on Linux. All files that are referenced in this section are the relative paths to the agent service installation location.

The PowerProtect agent service performs the following operations:

• Addon detection—An addon integrates the application agent into the agent service. The agent service automatically detects the addons on the system for each application asset type and notifies the PowerProtect Data Manager. While multiple addons can operate with different asset types, only one agent service runs on the application host. Specific asset types can coexist on the same application host.
• Discovery—The agent service discovers both stand-alone and clustered database servers (application systems), databases and file systems (assets), and their backup copies on the application agent host. After the initial discovery, when the agent service discovers any new application systems, assets, or copies, the agent service notifies the PowerProtect Data Manager.
• Self-service configuration—The agent service can configure the application agent for self-service operations by using information that is provided by the PowerProtect Data Manager. When you add an asset to a protection policy for self-service or centralized protection, or modify the protection policy, including changing the DD Boost credentials, the PowerProtect Data Manager automatically pushes the protection configuration to the agents.
  NOTE: If you change the DD Boost credentials to include \ in the password, the protection policy configuration will not be pushed to the agents unless you also select the protection policy from the Protection Policies window, and then click Set LockBox.
• Centralized backups—The agent service performs the centralized backups as requested by the PowerProtect Data Manager.
• Centralized restores—The agent service performs the centralized restores as requested by the PowerProtect Data Manager.
  NOTE: In the current release, the centralized restores are only available for the File System agent, Microsoft SQL Server agent, and Storage Direct agent.
• Backup deletion and catalog cleanup—The PowerProtect Data Manager deletes the backup files directly from the protection storage when a backup expires or an explicit delete request is received and no dependent (incremental or log) backups exist. The PowerProtect Data Manager goes through the agent service to delete the catalog entries from the database vendor's catalog and the agent's local datastore.
  NOTE: Deletion of any backup copies manually or through the command line is not recommended. PowerProtect Data Manager deletes all the expired copies as needed.

The agent service is started during the agent installation by the installer. The agent service runs in the background as a service and you do not interact with it directly.

The config.yml file contains the configuration information for the agent service, including several parameter settings that you can change within the file. The config.yml file is located in the <agent_service_installation_location> directory.

The agent service periodically starts subprocesses to perform the discovery jobs. You can see the type and frequency of these jobs in the jobs: section of the config.yml file. The job interval unit is minutes.

The agent service maintains a datastore in the <agent_service_installation_location>/dbs/v1 directory, which contains information about the application system, assets, and backups discovered on the system. The size of the datastore files depends on the number of applications and copies on the host. The agent service periodically creates a backup of its datastore in the <agent_service_installation_location>/dbs/v1/backups directory, as used to recover the datastore if this datastore is lost.