About the VSS Snapshot and Snapback wizards and the vxsnap utility
Prev Methods of implementing Quick Recovery snapshots Next

About the VSS Snapshot and Snapback wizards and the vxsnap utility

If you need to create an individual one-time snapshot, you can do so either from the command line, using the vxsnap command line utility, or from the VEA console using the VSS Snapshot and Snapback wizards.

You must prepare the mirror for the snapshot manually, using the Prepare command. In addition, you cannot use the Snapshot wizard or command line to schedule periodic refreshing of the snapshot. Instead you manually reattach the mirror, allowing it to resynchronize, and then create a snapshot again from the resynchronized mirror.

Therefore, these methods are best suited for a one-time special-purpose snapshot. If you need to maintain a snapshot set for future use, you should instead set up a snapshot schedule using the VSS Exchange Snapshot Scheduler Wizard or the Quick Recovery Configuration Wizard.

If replication is enabled for an Exchange 2010 database in a DAG, these SFW snapshot methods can also be used to create a snapshot of the passive copy of an Exchange 2010 database.

The following table shows the corresponding vxsnap commands for the VSS wizards.

Table: Actions of VSS wizard and vxsnap command

Action

VSS wizard

vxsnap command

Creates a set consisting of snapshots of all the volumes in the specified Exchange database.

VSS Snapshot

create

Reattaches and resynchronizes a snapshot set to the production database volumes.

VSS Snapback

reattach

Note:

The vxsnap commands must be invoked on a local system. On Windows Server systems, all CLI commands must run in the command window in the "run as administrator" mode.
Prev Up Next
About the VSS Exchange Snapshot Scheduler Wizard Home Planning your Quick Recovery solution