Plan a VSS backup strategy to optimize your backup operations
performance and avoid potential problems.
Consider the following requirements when you plan for VSS backups:
- Custom application and file system data VSS
backups are only available for NTFS and ReFS volumes.
- Make sure to review optimal practice
recommendations by Microsoft for your level of
Exchange Server.
- Ensure that you have a well-defined and tested recovery plan that
meets your service level objectives.
- Use single hardware LUNs for log and
system files.
- Use single hardware LUNs for the database
files.
- Use basic disks.
- If you plan to keep some VSS snapshot backups on local shadow
volumes only, make sure to consider the VSS provider-specific implementation
and configuration options when you set up your strategy. For example,
if your VSS hardware provider supports a full-copy snapshot versus
a copy-on-write (COW) snapshot mechanism, full-copy type implementations
have greater disk storage requirements. However, full-copy type implementations
are less risky because they do not rely on the original volume to
restore the data. COW implementations require much less disk storage
but rely completely on the original volume to process a restore. Since
these implementations are entirely controlled by the VSS provider
and not Tivoli® Storage FlashCopy® Manager,
make sure to consult your VSS provider documentation for a complete
understanding of your VSS implementation.
- If you run parallel VSS backups, stagger the start of the backups
by at least ten minutes. This interval ensures that the snapshot operations
do not overlap. If you do not stagger the snapshots, errors can occur.
In addition, configure the parallel instance backups so they do not
take snapshots of the same volumes. Ensure that parallel backups do
not make a snapshot of the same LUN.
- Do not place multiple volumes on the same LUN. Microsoft advises
that you configure a single volume, single partition, and single LUN
as 1 to 1 to 1.Do
not set the ASNODENAME option in the dsm.opt file
when you use Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager.
Setting ASNODENAME can cause VSS backups and VSS
restores to fail.