This is one of those posts where the main target is myself. Today a coworker of mine ran into some trouble getting SC DPM to install properly. The problem turned out to be a permissions issue which is detailed on a TechNet page that seems to be a bit disconnected from the rest of the directions.
Matt Beaver wrote up an extremely easy to follow, concise set of directions for configuring DPM here - http://mattbeaver2002.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0&sa=73386213
The missing permissions in our environment came into play during the “Registering the WSS Writer Service” section. As you are attempting to run the configuresharepoint.exe commandline utility, keep the following guidance in mind(Technet):
Type ConfigureSharePoint -EnableSharePointProtection.
Enter your Windows SharePoint Services farm administrator credentials. This account should be a local administrator on the WFE server. If the farm administrator is not the local administrator on the WFE server, you must grant the following permissions on the WFE server:
- Grant the WSS_Admin_WPG group full control to the DPM folder (%Program Files%\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM).
- Grant the WSS_Admin_WPG group read access to the DPM Reg key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Data Protection Manager).
I hope this helps you as it helped me!