1. Backing up Enterprise Applications: Transaction Consistency is Key Elias Khnaser www.eliaskhnaser.com Twitter: @ekhnaser

2. About Elias Khnaser

3. Agenda What Is Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS)? Why VSS? VSS Components Native Operating System VSS Backup VMware vSphere 4.x Backups Agent Assisted VSS Aware Backups How Volume Shadow Copies Are Created Agent Assisted VSS Aware Restore

4. What is Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS)? VSS is Windows framework for application backups VSS is a built-in Windows service that facilitates and coordinates the creation of consistent copies of Transaction-based application data 2 methods for creating Shadow Copies: Clone (Full Clone/Split Mirror) Copy-on-Write (Difference File) Transaction-based applications Exchange SQL Active Directory More

5. Why VSS? Avoid crash-consistent backups Crash-consistent is a nice way of saying hard stop Application awareness Avoidance of manual post restore tasks Application consistency is critical VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows Backup VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows Restore

6. VSS Components Volume Shadow Copy Service is a service that coordinates the function of all components to create the shadow copy Requestors initiate Shadow Copy Creation Writers prevent data inconsistency Providers create the Shadow Copy System Provider Hardware Providers Software Providers Source Volume is the volume that contains the data to be shadowed Storage Volume is the volume that holds the shadow copy A number of providers available

7. Native Operating System VSS Backup Volume Shadow Copy Service Writers Requestor Provider Disk Volume SQL, Exchange, Active Directory, Oracle, SharePoint Backup software Operating system, storage array or system provider

8. VMware Tools doesn’t quiesce applications May impact recovery VMware vSphere 4.x Backups VMware Tools is for quiescing filesystem with VSS Image level backup that is crash consistent Volume Shadow Copy Service Writers Requestor Provider Disk Volume SQL, Exchange, Active Directory, Oracle, SharePoint ESXi Host VMware Tools Disk Volume Operating system, storage array or system provider

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