Media co-location has exist since DPM 2010. It allow you to group multiple protection group when in the same retention range into the same tape. In DPM 2010, this feature only can achieve using command-line (rather than GUI) and user cannot specify which protection group to be part of the tape co-location. A lot of customer has raised concern and mentioned that it is not efficient in term of tape usage. Below screenshot is showing backup of VMM data and each tape store few MB. This has resulted wastage of tape resources.
DPM 2012 will allow administrators to co-locate multiple protection groups to one tape or set of tapes. In other words, tapes can be shared, which increases the products overall efficiency.
Click on the Optimize Usage in the ribbon
You can create a new Tape Co-location or add several protection group into 1 co-located tape.
Click Modify to modify existing sets and i have added VMM Backup and DPM Database as the one co-location sets.
When backup to tape occur, DPM will use the same shared tape. Here is the tape content when backup VMM data and DPM database into the tape:-
