Chiming in late, but... While I agree with Chris that Microsoft supports it and respect his opinion, anyone in an enterprise environment who bets the farm on VSS backups of Exchange is nuts. Nuts, nuts, nuts, I tell you.
We run an EMC Clariion SAN and I wouldn't trust THEIR snapshot technology to back up Exchange. And theirs must be better than Microsoft's, right?? What the hell is going on with this thread?? Back up Exchange as you've always done. These new-fangled technologies will work themselves out. Two years from now, we may be all backing up via vss. But not now, if you're betting the farm. b -----Original Message----- From: Chris Scharff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004 9:50 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Rather than write you off, perhaps I should conclude you did your research at one point, formed a conclusion and didn't keep up the changing nature of VSS technology as it relates to advances available with 3rd party integration. Nino Bilic with Microsoft PSS has an informative post[1] on the Exchange team's blog[2] today with regards to VSS. Perhaps you'd like to read something a bit more current than when you did your original research. VSS may still not be the right solution for your environment, it isn't for many customers IMO. But I believe some, if not all of the concerns you voiced originally are addressed by Nino's entry. [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/exchange/archive/2004/06/25/166104.aspx [2] http://blogs.msdn.com/exchange/ -- Chris Scharff MCSE, MVP-Exchange MessageOne, Inc. (o) 512.652.4500 11044 Research Blvd (f) 512.652.4504 Building C, 5th Floor (d) 512.233.1999 Austin, TX 78759 EMS: On demand e-mail continuity. http://www.messageone.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan Bartley Posted At: Thursday, June 24, 2004 3:54 PM Posted To: swynk Conversation: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Feel free to write me off, I don't have a need to play the who's smarter game with you or base my actions on your rule set. As you said, people can take what they need and write off the rest. My ego and daily working status are still intact if someone does not take what I say and find it does not apply to their environment. That doesn't mean I won't offer my experience, just means I don't judge my own expertise by it. I've been to Redmond and other private confabs several times too. Does not make me smarter than someone else, nor close the book on what is known by me. Thanks for the debate, I won't tie up this list on it anymore, it has seen its usefulness end. Best Regards, Dan Bartley -----Original Message----- From: Chris Scharff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 16:34 To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 You've made an affirmative statement as to the existence of certain documents. How can I possibly prove that the documents don't exist? It's like providing that purple unicorns don't exist. Can't be done. Ergo, you need to provide evidence as to your affirmative statement or I'll just write you off as not knowing what you're talking about. Others on this list are welcome to come to their own conclusions about your knowledge of the subject. And I hardly asked you to do the work for me. I asked for you to provide a basis for your assertions. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan Bartley Posted At: Thursday, June 24, 2004 3:15 PM Posted To: swynk Conversation: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 No, BS is you demanding I do the work for you. Find the links yourself, I already went through the process when I wanted to know more. You are welcome to know whatever you want, I see you are quite comfortable with that. After all, you hung out with people at Redmond and TechEd. Best Regards, Dan Bartley -----Original Message----- From: Chris Scharff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 15:55 To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Really, we're not talking about two different things. VSS is included with Win2003. Using it can even be done with just NTBackup, though to get maximum performance, flexibility and some other nifty features, 3rd party software is required. 3rd party software is generally not free. In addition, VSS requires more disk (in most cases way more disk than people realize), disk is also not free. Extending timeouts does not necessarily mean that VSS is resource intensive. What it means is that Exchange is a different beast from most other applications and it proves that time and time again, day in and day out. And I have no doubt that doing multiple snapshots during the day is more resource intensive from a visible performance perspective than doing an online backup in the middle of the night to a DL380. However "resource intensive" is a phrase which while full of sound and fury signifies nothing. A "properly sized" server alleviates the concerns around this nebulous "resource intensity" does it not? Now this properly sized server may indeed cost more than the machine one might normally plan to deploy Exchange on... thus we again come around to the costs associated with VSS. While freely available, it is not free to implement in all but the tiniest of corner cases. Post a link, a real reference to why it isn't the best solution. Otherwise, I call bullshit. There is plenty of evidence that for the right customers and the right scenarios VSS is a valuable option for Exchange backup and restore that no other solution provides. So it becomes not only the BEST option, but the ONLY option. If you've thought about how it works and have come to the conclusion that it is not the best solution for a DB, please by all means share your work. Nothing I enjoy more than being shown the error of my ways, I always find those to be the lessons I keep with me the longest. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan Bartley Posted At: Thursday, June 24, 2004 2:43 PM Posted To: swynk Conversation: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Really? Perhaps we are talking about 2 different things. VSS is included with Win2003. Other than the cost of the OS, which would be incurred whether you used VSS or not, there is no cost for VSS separately. As for the second issue, if there were not an issue with VSS and resource intensive systems, there would not be an MS official patch to address the problem and extend the time outs. As for the third issue, there are articles at both MS and Veritas explaining why it is not the best solution for backing up a database. No, I don't remember off the top of my head what the article numbers are, I found them doing a search on the VSS in both KBs. If you think about how it works, it doesn't seem too hard to me to figure it is not the best backup solution for a DB. Best Regards, Dan Bartley -----Original Message----- From: Chris Scharff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 15:25 To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Really? I spent quite a bit of time talking with the Exchange product group about this in both Redmond and at TechEd and got a different feel from those discussions. While VSS is not everything some people like to believe it might be and the costs associated with it can be quite significant, I got no indication from them that my investment would not be a good one should I decide to invest in such a solution. What about the process in and of itself is not resource or restore friendly assuming properly sized and managed hardware? -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan Bartley Posted At: Thursday, June 24, 2004 1:46 PM Posted To: swynk Conversation: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 While they do say it can be used for Exchange and SQL, and indeed you will see them in the shadow components that can be backed up, they do not recommend it as the best method. It is not as resource friendly nor restore friendly (logs, etc.) as other more refined database backup software. In fact if you have a very resource intensive system and try to backup DBs with Shadow Copy it is likely to fail without a MS patch that increases the timeouts (that answers your question on whether it is faster). It is however very effective on other system objects like registry and AD DB. Best Regards, Dan Bartley -----Original Message----- From: Chris Scharff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 14:33 To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Microsoft provides support for it... -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bridges, Samantha Posted At: Thursday, June 24, 2004 11:55 AM Posted To: swynk Conversation: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 "This is absolutely not true. Exchange 2003 leverages the Shadow Copies service within Windows 2003 in order to take snapshot backups of Exchange." Yes, you are right....this is the theory...but only a theory at this point..haven't seen it done in the "real world". -----Original Message----- From: Jason Clishe [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 12:19 PM To: Exchange Discussions Cc: Jason Clishe Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 This is absolutely not true. Exchange 2003 leverages the Shadow Copies service within Windows 2003 in order to take snapshot backups of Exchange. Jason -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bridges, Samantha Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 10:57 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 I understand that you cannot or should not think of Shadow copying the Exchange IS. The shadow copying feature in Windows 2003 is for the OS not for a database. To be clearer, you can use shadow copy for Windows or the OS not for the Exchange database. Hope this makes sense. We were in the same thought pattern as you and learned this wasn't going to work. Samantha -----Original Message----- From: Ajay Kulsh [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 8:42 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003 I need some enlightenment regarding Shadow Copying of Exchange 2003. I have read MS article - 822896 and some other references to understand shadow copying. What is not clear to me that if it takes typically only *about a minute* to create a shadow copy, how long does it normally take to write this data to a backup hardware? And while backup program is writing this, where is data kept? Memory cannot keep so much and I don't see any hard drive space requirements mentioned. Can shadow copying of Exchange 2003 only work with backup like SAN, not normal tape drive? Jay Kulsh _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&; lang=english To unsubscribe send a blank email to %%email.unsub%% Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe via postal mail, please contact us at: Jupitermedia Corp. 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