I got an alert by mail from our DPM server saying
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).
In this case this was caused by the password had expired on the local DPM agent account on the protected server.
To update the password I used the two utilities SetDpmServer.exe and Update-NonDomainServerInfo.ps1
On the protected server running the DPM agent
SetDpmServer.exe -dpmServerName YOURDPMSERVER -isNonDomainServer -updatePassword
On the DPM server
Update-NonDomainServerInfo –PSName YOURPROTECTEDDPMSERVER –dpmServerName YOURDPMSERVER
