Re: Files being skipped in backup...

That's a good enough answer to my first question - the motivation for
yosemite. Whether it's justified or not - I haven't looked at yosemite and
don't intend to. Not because I don't think it's any good, rather because SBS
backup is a good solution.

Images are nice - but they're not a replacement for backups.

You are probably missing out on a few things. If you support more than one
SBS, you may be a MS partner at some level. If you're not, become one.
'Server Down' support gives you no cost access to MS Customer Support.
(allthough I don't know what country you're in, YMMV).

The sbs backup/restore is documented on the MS SBS web site, and I believe a
link to the download location is on the Backup page of SBS Standard
Mangement. Many of us 'real users' have verified the process.

Hey, I'm not really trying to talk you out of Yosemite - I only want you to
be aware that SBS has a solution that it appears you haven't considered; it
comes with the product - you already own it.

FWIW, I used BE on prior versions of SBS. BE was a nice backup application -
but it really sucked for bare metal restores of SBS. Perhaps it's better now
(I don't know) but I can't see spending a grand when there's a good solution
built in. I now use SBSBackup, complimented by weekly images scheduled with
Paragon Drive-Backup.

I don't know anything about the 3rd party VSS article - all I know is I have
no problems with SBS backup - and networks I support have quite a wide
variety of data types and database back end server applications. I do
believe that there can be some issues on restore, where databases have been
open and backed up by VSS, but in my experience they're commonly not
difficult recovery situations. OTOH, most of these databases have their own
backup facilities - and they can be run prior to SBS backup - so SBS backup
is actually backing up a static backup. Take MS SQL for example.

--
Les Connor [SBS Community Member - SBS MVP]
-----------------------------------------------------------
SBS Rocks !
----------------------
"Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll remember. Involve me and I'll
understand." - Confucius


"Andrew Meador - ASCPA, MCSE, MCP+I, Network+, A+"
<ameador1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1138914280.132817.141000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Here is where my data corruption concern cam from:
"Many applications are not VSS compliant. Many of these legacy
applications may never be updated to be compliant because of
development and maintenance costs and will forever be at risk of open
file problems when employing the VSS snapshot framework. Since legacy
writer applications do not participate in the VSS snapshot(s) create
process, VSS cannot predict or control the I/O flow of such
applications. The VSS solution to legacy writer support is to provide
"crash consistency". This means that VSS only guarantees file system
integrity and does not guarantee legacy writer transaction integrity.
If the VSS snapshot is created while a legacy writer transaction is in
progress, the snapshot will contain a partial transaction and will be
corrupt. The VSS framework is designed to manage data on machines where
both the application and its related files reside. File-only servers
are not supported by VSS because the applications that manipulate the
data on these servers are running on other machines and cannot be
integrated with VSS on the file server. Often, enterprises have
applications that run on workstations separate from where the files are
stored. These client applications are not supported by VSS either."
The source of this is
http://www.stbernard.com/products/manuals/ofm/ofm/volume_shadow_copy_service.htm
The Yosemite Software is at version 8, it's not a new application.
Its restore process is actually much easier. It creates a bootable cd
that will restore a system back to whatever full backup you have
available. I always run a full backup. This is a much easier restore
than a partial install of SBS2003 and then restoring from a backup. I
have has problems getting the system back to a completly normal state
doing it this was in the past with other Windows OS's.
I will give it a look, but tested, documented, and MS supported
doesn't mean much. Testing can be incomplete, documentation can be
vague and limited or non-existant, and I've never received support from
Microsoft in a timely fasion that didn't involve a pretty price tag. I
can get some level of support in these newsgroups, but it is not
typically quick to get a full or appropriate answer and I can't rely on
hours to days before being able to get an answer on how to restore a
server for a client. Beside the fact that previous versions have left
me wanting more. But again, I'll look at it. If it has been improved
significantly I'll consider it after reading the documentation - or if
I can get the answer to my questions in the first post, I'll may still
use Yosemite. The backup process in this case is the issue, but if I
can resolve those questions, the restore is simple and faster. I
consider the whole point of a backup to get the system back up the
fastest way with data in tack, I think Yosemite can beat MS in speed of
recovery.



.

Relevant Pages

  • RE: VSS Error 12293 & 7001
    ... In the ''Shadow copies'' tab, ... Shadow copy tasks appear similar to "VSS ... What's the backup program you are using? ... Do you use the SBS backup ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: VSS: Possible to make a transportable shadow copy of a raw disk?
    ... know that there's some support for RAW. ... We can avoid writing to sector 0, so that Windows can write a MBR ... > You say, "VSS backup is based on windows filesystem" but VSS is only an intermediary, not ... > a backup application. ...
    (microsoft.public.win32.programmer.kernel)
  • Re: SBS 2003 Backup failing
    ... I understand that you encounter error 800423f4 when trying to backup SBS ... volume by using the Volume Shadow Copy service in Windows Server 2003 ... I've re-registered the VSS DLLs. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • RE: Backups, VSS and SBS2003 HELP NEEDED!!!
    ... I suggest that disable the VSS function temporary and use NTbackup to have ... On the Welcome tab, click Backup Wizard. ... we suggest you that contact Microsoft Product ... Support Services via telephone so that a dedicated Support Professional can ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: system volume information, can I move?
    ... have several SBS installs where SBS backup fails, ... We could, after all, have the exchange and sql data on volumes were SC were ... Not sure if this will muddy the waters about VSS, ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)