What's new in the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) with Windows Server 2008 – Diskshadow

[FileCAB-Team]

First published on TECHNET on Jan 24, 2008

This is the first of a multi part series on what's new in the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) with Windows Server 2008

· Diskshadow

Windows Server 2008 has a new requester that ships on all SKUs. VSS requesters are used to create and manage shadow copies. You can find more information about VSS and shadow copies at this link .

Diskshadow enables the creation and management of hardware and software shadow copies including transportable ones. It has an interactive shell much like Diskpart and a script mode for automation of scenarios. The command reference for disk shadow is posted at this link

Some example of scenarios that are possible using Diskshadow

o    Creation of  hardware or software shadow copies that are subsequently exposed as read -only volumes

o    Creation of hardware shadow copies that may be masked and subsequently imported on a different host for backups or data mining.

o    Fast recovery scenarios where a shadow copy created earlier is imported to replace a volume that may have been corrupted.

Send your comments to the VSS team at vss(noSPAM)@microsoft.com. We welcome your feedback.

·         The API updates for VSS in Windows Server 2008 are available at this link . Subsequent blogs will discuss some of the new features and scenarios made possible with these APIs

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Dinesh Haridas