Creates simultaneous snapshots of all volumes in a specified component, providing a point-in-time snapshot set.
Separate source volumes and attributes with forward slashes, not spaces. Source and snapshot volume attributes are paired. You must specify the source volume if you choose to specify the snapshot volume plex, drive letter, drive path, label, or volume name.
Note that if Exchange 2010 mailbox database is configured under VCS, then you can store the snapshot set file in a file share path by configuring a file share resource. This is to avoid configuring extra shared volumes to store the snapshot set file, which is available once the mailbox database fails over.
There can be large number of mailbox databases in Exchange 2010 and each database may have independent schedules. Hence number of different paths required for storing the snapshot metadata files are higher, which is achieved by configuring a file share resource. You can also specify the file share path in the redirect.txt
path, for example, \\MySystemName1\share1\QRDir
.
In case of schedule snapshot even though schedules are visible on all nodes, snapshot will happen only on a node where mailbox database is present.
See Creating a one-time snapshot set.
The vxsnap create command has the following syntax:
vxsnap [-x <filename>] create [source=<volume>] [/DriveLetter=<driveLetter>][/DrivePath=<drivePath>] [/Newvol=<newVolName>][/Plex=<plexName>]...writer=<writerName> component=<componentName>[backuptype=<backuptype>][-E][-O][-C] [secHosts=<secondary hosts>]
The vxsnap create command has the following attributes:
The following is an example of the vxsnap create command:
vxsnap -x backupdoc.xml create writer="Microsoft Exchange Writer" component="DB1"source=L:/DriveLetter=O source=M:/DriveLetter=P backuptype=full
This example creates a snapshot set based on the component "DB1," which contains volume L, the log volume, and volume M, the database volume.
The snapshots are assigned drive letters O, and P, and Q, respectively.
The XML file backupdoc.xml is used to store the VSS metadata that identifies the snapshot set. The Full backup creates the copy of the database and transaction logs volumes, runs Eseutil to check for consistency, and then truncates the transaction logs.
vxsnap -x snapdata.xml createsource=E:\Data\DB1/DrivePath=E:\Backup\DB1
This command creates snapshots from the volume mounted on E:\Data\DB1. The resulting snapshot volume is assigned mount point E:\Backup\DB1.
The metadata involved in this operation is stored in snapdata.xml.