Windows Admins & VSS

I've been running into a number of Windows Admins lately who are not familiar with the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service. I guess you have to be an admin who works with backups to have any familiarity with it??? Is this common?  If you have admins who seem to lack knowledge of VSS I would recommend the following MS TechNet library reference. Lately I've been dealing with the object enumeration and missing system writer issues, if anyone has found a solution for the object enumeration issue I'm all ears!!!

Windows 2003 Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) Hotfixes

If you are need of VSS hotfixes checkout this page from IBM. I plan to add it to the link list...might start a list of links to patches and updates, but that could be difficult to keep current. I know this is an older reference but I needed the fixes recently and it seems the VSS issues don't go away, they just keep coming back with each patch of Windows.

VSS issues on Windows

October last year I blogged about VSS issues on Windows. Here is another link which may help troubleshooting;

http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21243837

Cheers

VSS Question

I was asked about Exchange backups today and after looking at some documentation I remembered that with Exchange 2003 there is a VSS backup option. For the life of me I can't think of anyone who has used it with their Exchange backups. Is there anyone out there who has attempted to use, or is using VSS with their Exchange TDP? I have never trusted it enough to rely on it for my Exchange backups. It has enough problems with the system objects, but since MS has had some time to work out the kinks has anyone been successful with it? Is it worth the hassle?

Intro and VSS information

Hello to all you readers of TSMEXPERT out there. My name is Jared and I've been ask to join by my good friend Chad (who is leaving the job he helped me get!) and post some of the Windows stuff that I've been doing with TSM lately. I put together a PPT presentation that talks about VSS and TSM. It might not be that helpful but it was useful to our team here. I have spent many hours trying to fix various TSM and VSS issues over the past couple years and this is a result of that work. I will warn you that some of this is "editorialized" and those parts should be rather obvious.

Without further ado, click here to download it.

System State Backup Issue

We recently had to rebuild a box (thank goodness it was not production) and found that the system state and objects had not backed up.  Stranger still there was no error stating they failed. In fact the only error was that the LVSA directory was not set and it would not be used during the backup.  Why would a failure to completely setup the LVSA affect the system objects and state? TSM doesn't require the LVSA to back them up.  We checked multiple systems and found this happening on more than one.  The client level we are on is 5.2.4 and higher.  Has anyone else experienced this?  BTW - The backup schedules were showing in the event log as COMPLETED not Failed.

TSM and Windows Volume Shadow Copy

First off let me just say that the name TSMExpert was more of a joke. I was setting up aliases on Notes Mail and for fun put TSMExpert and viola I got it. Didn't think it would go through but hey as long as I have it I might as well use it. I can be reached at tsmexpert@us.ibm.com and will answer questions as much as possible. Remember TSM is a fickle beast but when setup correctly it is the best enterprise backup/archive tool on the market.

I have been working with many issues on Windows 2003 and the TSM client. We upgraded to 5.2.4 on many of our clients and some to 5.3 due to the shadow copy issues. TSM seems to have serious issues with VSC and gives RC12 on schedules when its implemented. I am not quite sure how VSC is suppose to help when it resides on the same disk as the data its supposed to correct, but I get its more like the snapshot feature on NetApps. I would recommend you upgrade all 2003 servers if you are having this problem to 5.3 since it is supposed to resolve this issue. Also be aware there are problems with older client versions stability and reliability on 2003 servers. We have experienced numerous crashes and System State backup failures with the older clients. This is another reason for upgrading.