SFW provides support for creating snapshots for the Microsoft Exchange storage groups and the SQL Server databases. FlashSnap integrates with the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to let you create snapshots of all volumes that tare associated with an Exchange storage group or SQL database component without taking the databases offline. Volume Replicator further integrates the VSS snapshot feature with the IBC messaging to enable synchronized snapshots on the Primary and Secondary.

The VSS Snapshot wizard integrates with VSS to quiesce the databases of an Exchange Server storage group or SQL Server databases and then simultaneously snapshot the volumes in the Exchange or SQL components across the Primary and Secondary hosts. VSS then reactivates the database immediately after the snapshots are created. This quiescing, supported by Exchange Server at the storage group level and SQL at the database level, allows for Microsoft-supported and guaranteed persistent snapshots of your data.

A snapshot of a storage group or the database can be reattached and resynchronized to match the current state of the storage group or the database. An XML file to store the volume snapshot metadata is created on the Primary as a part of the snapshot operation.

When creating synchronized snapshots, the wizard verifies that the Secondary satisfies some preset conditions; there are some checks in place to validate this.