Backing up Shadow Copy Components

[tolinrome1]

Does it make sense to select to backup Shadow Copy Components (view by resource) when we are not using VSS on the Server?

[Colin_Weaver]

Kindof depends on what is on teh server - i.e. DFSR can only be backed up via Shadow Copy

Also note with the latest operating systems and the latest versions of BE a lot of agent processe natively make VSS calls with or without the Open File Options enabled (which is why you sometimes see AOFO error messages when you don't think you are using AOFO as VSS messages are interpreted as AOFO ones)

[Jonabc123]

shadow copy is use by DFS and might be other.

if you want to backup your DFS folder then you will have to use that to do the backup or else you will not able to restore any DFS folder.

Let say you have a folder in d:\123 and it's replicated to other server by DFS and you can select that to be backup via the normal way and it won't complain but if a user lost a file in the folder you won't be able to restore it.

[tolinrome1]

We are not using DFS anywhere so I guess it's a waste  to select to backup Shadow Copy Components  then?

Thanks!

[pkh · Accepted solution]

If you are not using shadow copy or DSFR on the volume then there would be almost nothing to backup when you backup the Shadow Copy Component.  Why not just select it, so when you do use shadow copy or DSFR, they are automatically backed up.

[be-nugget]

Shadow copy components includes other useful things you may need to be backed up such as:

- DHCP

- Event Logs

- WMI

In my experience shadow copy components is very small and not normally a problem to keep it in the job.