Tip of the Day: VSS on file shares

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Today’s Tip…

Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 added the ability to VSS snapshots across file shares.  This allows VSS compatible backup applications to backups of file shares and take advantage of snapshots.  Previously this meant that every time you did  a backup of a file share, you had to backup everything in the share.  By utilizing snapshots, subsequent backups will only need to include the changed data.

There are some requirements to make this work…

  • Application server and file server must be running Windows Server 2012
  • Application server and file server must be domain joined to the same Active Directory domain
  • The “File Server VSS Agent Service” role service must be enabled on the file server
  • The backup agent must run in a security context that has backup operators or administrators privileges on both application server and file server
  • The backup agent/application must run in a security context that has at least READ permission on file share data that is being backed up
  • Both backup server and target server must be using SMB 3.0

For additional information, check out the following blog…

https://blogs.technet.com/b/clausjor/archive/2012/06/14/vss-for-smb-file-shares.aspx