The way through Data Protection Manager 2012 SP1 upgrade

Yesterday I installed SP1 on my DPM 2012 server – see the screenshots below. The setup itself was ok, but the problems began when updating the protection agents on Windows Server 2012 systems.

• Welcome Screen of Microsoft System Center 2012 Data Protection Manager Service Pack 1 – choose Install: Data Protection Manager
  
• Setup Welcome Screen, simply click Next
  
• Choose your type of SQL installation, typically you will use the dedicated one
  
• The installer shows a warning, when you need to backup your database first. Do so…
  
• Navigate to your DPM\bin directory and run dpmbackup -db
  
• Enter your product key, click Next
  
• Usually you do not need to change anything here:
  
• Security Settings: Specify the password for your SQL Server service account. You should have this in your documentation
  
• Everything’s ready now, let setup do its job…
  
• After setup is complete you’ll need to update all protection agents in your environment. You may recognize Windows Server 2012 servers that are marked “unreachable” after updating (Data Protection Manager Error ID: 308 / The protection Agent operation failed because DPM could not communicate with the Protection Agent service on xyz / The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion (0x8007041D)
  
• Looking at the eventlog of that Windows Server 2012 server, you’ll receive this error: “DCOM got error “1053″ attempting to start the service DPMRA with arguments “Unavailable” in order to run the server: {[GUID]}”
  
• Running dpmra.exe from your DPM\bin directory will let you know, that the agent didn’t find VssRequestor.dll (The program can’t start because VssRequestor.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.)
  
• Looking at the DPM\bin directory on your server won’t let you find it either
  

And here comes the solution to this problem. Simply copy the VssRequestor.dll from any non Windows Server 2012 server and hit Refresh on the server in DPM Agent management view. That’s it…