Practical implications of Windows high-end storage backup and restore

This chapter excerpt from Inside Windows Storage, by Dilip C. Naik is printed with permission from Addison-Wesley/Prentice Hall, Copyright 2003. Click here for the chapter download or purchase the entire book here.

High-end storage, which can track metadata on a per-sector basis, allows backup/restore operations to be more efficient by allowing changes to be tracked very closely and having backup operations deal with just changed data.

To be certain that a snapshot is consistent from an application's point of view, it is essential to have the operating system (including file systems) and the application participate in the process of flushing the cache and temporarily suspending write operations while the snapshot is made. The volume shadow copy service shipping with Windows Server 2003 provides the needed operating system and file system support, as well as architecture for the needed application support. Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server are two important applications that will take advantage of this architecture.

It remains to be seen how quickly other vendors adopt and support the volume shadow copy architecture.

WINDOWS BACKUP AND RESTORE TECHNOLOGIES

  Introduction
 Tip #1: Reasons for backup and restore
 Tip #2: Backup problems
 Tip #3: Backup classifications
 Tip #4: Windows 2000 backup utility
 Tip #5: Techniques to create a volume snapshot
 Tip #6: XP and Windows 2003 volume shadow copy service
 Tip #7: Windows-powered NAS devices and snapshots
 Tip #8: Network Data Management Protocol
 Tip #9: Practical implications
 Tip #10: Summary

About the author: Dilip C. Naik has more than twelve years of experience in various roles at Microsoft, including software engineer, program manager, and technical evangelist. His contributions include writing CIFS/SMB code, CIFS-related RFCs, code and documentation for the Windows NT Installable File System Kit, as well as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and performance/management (including storage management) features for the Windows platform. Dilip has also represented Microsoft on a number of industry standards organizations.

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