Auto running consistency checks

Frequently data sources can end up in a inconsistent state which will cause the job to fail until a consistency check has happened.  Inconsistent data sources typically are caused by reboots in the middle of a syncronization or general server unavailability during a syncronization period.  You can set consistency checks to run once every 24 hours on a protection group, however that means that if your data source is in a in consistent state its going to stay that way until your scheduled consistency check runs (which means there could potentially be 24 hours where no syncronization happens).  Also, for consistent data sources, it simply skips them and writes an informational alert which means more alerts to dig through.

I prefer to run a periodic check (at the half way point between each syncronization) against all data sources on my DPM server and attempt to run a consistency check ONLY on inconsistent data sources.  Here is a bit of powershell code that you can run as a scheduled task with your DPM server as an input parameter that will scan every single data source and run consistency checks again inconsistent data sources:

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param($DPMServer)
 
connect-dpmserver -dpmservername $dpmserver
$PGList = @(Get-ProtectionGroup $dpmserver)
foreach($PG in $PGList)
{
$dslist=@(get-datasource $PG)
write-host ""
write-host "Checking for data sources in inconsistent state..." -Fore green
foreach ($ds in $dslist)
{
if ($ds.state -eq "invalid")
{
write-host ""
write-host "Found inconsistent data source...starting consistency check..." -Fore Red
Start-DatasourceConsistencyCheck -Datasource $ds
}
}
}
write-host ""
write-host "Done checking for inconsistent jobs!" -Fore green
Disconnect-DPMServer $dpmserver

Tags: Consistency, DPM, powershell