VSS Snapshots - Benefits

[Dandan712]

May you please tell me more about VSS Snapshot ?

I know what a snapshot of vm is, but what does mean VSS ?

What is benefit of VSS Snapshot ? I read in this forum that it's so great !!!

I got this from Yellow bricks blog ( http://www.yellow-bricks.com/ )

VSS Snapshots

July 26th, 2008

Posted by: Duncan Epping | Filed under: VMware | 1 Comment »

If you just upgraded to 3.5 Update 2 and updated VMware tools and want to use VSS for snapshotting than you will have to enable this manually for each VM:

1. In the VMware Tools installer, select Modify > Drivers > VSS.

2. Complete the installation process.

3. Restart the virtual machine to make sure VSS components are installed and running.

[ceemour]

basically vss will quiesce your os and vss aware apps to make them consistent for a backup

therefore things like ms sql server and exchange should quiesce when the vm is snapshotted

i am experimenting with the following

esxi u2 with a 2k3 server with sql 2000 guest, vcbmounter on a 2k3 x64 pc

vcbmounter the guest, this snapshots the vm which makes it available for backup with either fullvm ot file options, the guest sql 2000 quiesces (confirmed by looking at the sql 2000 logs)

[Dandan712]

Thanks for your answer.

I also found this link which may be very helpful for VCB beginners like me...

http://blog.baeke.info/blog/_archives/2006/12/8/2559397.html

[depping]

VSS stands for Volume Shadow Copy Service, MS wrote a technet article about what it exactly does:

as mentioned above, the cool thing about VSS is that there are Applications that are VSS aware!

Duncan

My virtualisation blog:

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[dconvery · Accepted solution]

The VM Backup Guide lays out how to get the VSS drivers to install and it also gives you a comparison of different methods of backup - VSS vs. Old School quiesce...

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_vm_backup.pdf

(Blatant Plug...)

If you are going to VMworld, check out my breakout - BC2497 - VMware Consolidated Backup - Report from the Trenches.

Dave

[Dandan712]

Thanks. Very useful guide