Re: Volume Shadow Copy on 2003 Server w/ SQL 2k SP3

From: Rob Bolbotowski (rb_at_LOGICWORKS.NET)
Date: 11/14/03

  • Next message: Chad Harrington: "Re: eTrust personal security offering" 
    Date:         Fri, 14 Nov 2003 00:57:35 -0500
To: NTBUGTRAQ@LISTSERV.NTBUGTRAQ.COM

    We've been doing over the network ntbackup's of Exchange 2003 storage groups and mail stores on Windows 2003 Std Server RTM, for a couple of days now ... what I'm seeing is, ntbackups just fail more, if you have VSC service taking daytime snap shots of shares on any volume that the stores reside on which you later backup .. for example:
     
    If I have my mail stores on D:\ and I set D:\Mail Stores, shared out to Admin group - then schedule a snap shot to occur on that share (to get my copy of the mail store for easier recovery) to another volume, once a day ... like E:\ ... it'll work fine and all ... but if ntbackup comes along and backups that share or that volume up for example, to local disk or network path on the same VLAN, it'll most likely fail or not complete at all. If VSC isn't taking snap shots, ntbackup does work fine.
     
    If snapshot does manage to get backed up, no way to recover it from the bkf file ... if of course, the bkf file isn't corrupt, which most of the time it is... very strange.. I know you need descriptors or some kind of agents or whatever, only to be supplied by 3rd party backup software ... but what's the point of even backing it up in ntbackup.exe if you can't restore, even if you do get a good backup locally or over to another UNC path ???
     
    /rob
     

    ________________________________

    From: Windows NTBugtraq Mailing List on behalf of Brian Bergin
    Sent: Wed 11/12/2003 5:57 PM
    To: NTBUGTRAQ@LISTSERV.NTBUGTRAQ.COM
    Subject: Volume Shadow Copy on 2003 Server w/ SQL 2k SP3

    MS has released a patch for ntbackup.exe for 2003 Server that resolves an
    issue with the Volume Shadow Copy Service (MS calls it VSS, though I can't
    understand why they'd use that when Visual Source Save is usually referred
    to as VSS, oh well...) where on 2003 RTM if you used ntbackup.exe to backup
    your volume (not the SQL databases, just files on the same volume), VSS
    would error out and revert to Win2k-style backups where any other open
    files would not be backed up. The KB article will be 828481, though they
    said it "should be posted to the web in a few weeks." If you're having
    this problem I assume you can refer to that KB and get it. If not, the SRX
    for the case is SRX030827607392 if they cannot find the KB article.

    We have tested it and confirmed that it does work; however, it does put an
    error in the backup logs but you can pretty much ignore it.

    BTW, this backup contains the fixes for .bks files missing selections
    causing the entire backup to fail. There's a separate fix for XP. If you
    have that problem, e-mail me and I'll send you the KB on that one so you
    can get that fix too. Both fixes should be included in their respective
    OS's next SPs.

    NOTE: Please reply to the list so others may benefit from your
    thoughts. If you're concerned it may not make it to the list, please cc:
    me on the reply.

    Sincerely,
    Terabyte Computers, Inc.

    Brian S. Bergin
    President

    http://www.terabyte.net

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