Shadow Copies

Discussion in 'Software' started by Rob1234, Aug 14, 2009.

  1. Rob1234

    Rob1234 Megabyte Poster Forum Leader

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    I was wondering if anyone has used shadow copies at work and what there experinces where with them?
    The look good but im guessing they will take up a lot of hard disk space?
     
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  2. zebulebu

    zebulebu Terabyte Poster

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    Used them in the past. Easy to set up, pretty simple to maintain. I recommend using a dedicated disk for shadow copies if the server(s) you're planning on implementing them on get caned for resources - there's a definite performance issue on heavily-loaded systems (I'm guessing due to the second write that needs to be done increasing seek time son the disk)
     
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  3. UKDarkstar
    Honorary Member

    UKDarkstar Terabyte Poster

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    You may also want to have a look here for background info etc.
     
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  4. Rob1234

    Rob1234 Megabyte Poster Forum Leader

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    Thanks will have a look, I have been doing a bit of research on them but everythign seems to say they are great but I thought they must have some draw backs.
     
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  5. Qs

    Qs Semi-Honorary Member Gold Member

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    Yep, I agree with zeb. It's easy to use and offers good, simple recovery.

    A few other things to think about:-

    • Restored files don't keep their previous NTFS permissions (they auto inherit from the parent folder you restore them to)
    • If you set the size of a cache, and it becomes full, then oldest copy will be overwritten with the newest copy. This could possibily prevent recovering from an earlier date range.
    • When you disable VSS all previous shadow copies are deleted (so don't frequently enable/disable for ****s and giggles).
    • Make sure you set a suitable schedule. IIRC the defaults are like 7:00AM and 1:30PM.

    Uh, yeah. Think that's about it.

    Qs
     
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  6. Rob1234

    Rob1234 Megabyte Poster Forum Leader

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    Cheers, i read about it in the 70-290 book :biggrin and I thought it sounds like something we could use where I work.
     
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  7. Kitkatninja
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Kitkatninja aka me, myself & I Moderator

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    Shadow copy has been an excellent tool, in fact remember all those commericals when 2003 was first released, it was like that :)

    However, we ran into a problem with Shadow copy, every so often, it would stop working. After alot of research, we found out it was an intermittant issue due to the 4kb cluster size, volume shadow copy and the defrag.

    -Ken
     
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  8. zebulebu

    zebulebu Terabyte Poster

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    You weren't using Backup Exec were you? I had a problem with BE backing up servers with shadow copies enabled - knocked the VSS writer for six on a semi-regular basis. That turned out to be a Backup Exec problem though - fixed througha Slimeantics liveupdate
     
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  9. Sparky
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Backup Exec strikes again! Bring back Veritas. :biggrin
     
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  10. Modey

    Modey Terabyte Poster

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    Yes we were actually, and on one of the main fileservers where the majority of shares were located. I'm guessing that didn't help. :)
     
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