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VSS Database Snapshots (Full vs. Diff)

 
Etavis-GNS-AG
Occasional Visitor

VSS Database Snapshots (Full vs. Diff)

We do application aware storage snapshots of our exchange server. With version 9.5 of the application aware snaphot manager, there where taken full vss snapshots of the database and transaction logs have been flushed afterwards:

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Log Name: Application
Source: MSExchangeIS
Date: 17.10.2012 13:02:49
Event ID: 9780
Task Category: Exchange VSS Writer
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: cds1mx01.cds.local
Description:
Exchange VSS Writer (instance bde2112a-a1ed-4f5b-81a4-9b8d02a3f6d1:313) has successfully completed the full or incremental backup of database 'SWI'. 

The database engine has also successfully executed log file truncation procedures for this database. (Note that this may or may not have resulted in the actual truncation of log files, depending on whether any log files existed that were candidates for truncation.)
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Since I installed the new version (10.0.0.1488) of application aware snaphot manager, transaction logs of the database are not flushed anymore. The cause is, that the snapshot is not doing a full backup (as before) but a copy or differential backup.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Log Name: Application
Source: MSExchangeIS
Date: 24.01.2013 13:59:47
Event ID: 9781
Task Category: Exchange VSS Writer
Level: Information
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: cds1mx01.cds.local
Description:
Exchange VSS Writer (instance 0fa9dc78-eb3e-4739-b7ad-5a14287f4416:952) has successfully completed the copy or differential backup of database 'SWI'. No logfiles were truncated for this database. 
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We use the cli and the cmc to create snapshots, same effect with both methods. Is there any way to control this?

 

Thanks in advance

2 REPLIES 2
GStrike
Occasional Visitor

Re: VSS Database Snapshots (Full vs. Diff)

This may not be the exact answer you are looking for, but, I just ran into this issue myself.

 

The problem is that VSS was no longer requesting Full backups.  It was requesting Differential.  The result is that the transaction logs started to accumulate and we were very close to running out of disk space.  It's a good thing we had disk space monitoring, otherwise, we would have ran out of space in the next couple of days.

 

When we upgraded SAN iQ on our nodes, we also upgraded the VSS Provider, as it is the recommendation.  However, it appears that the new 10.0 VSS Provider is requesting Differential backups.

 

Because we were within a couple GB of running out of space I choose to downgrade back to the 9.5 VSS provider to see if it would request a Full.  It did and the transaction logs were cleaned.


Greg

GStrike
Occasional Visitor

Re: VSS Database Snapshots (Full vs. Diff)

I would still like to know if there's a way to force the VSS Provider to request a full backup vs. differential.  Downgrading the provider right now is my only option.