Acronis Backup for Windows Server Essentials - User Guide - Manual (Page 129)

129 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2014
In most cases, VSS will use Acronis VSS Provider.

Software - Acronis VSS Provider
VSS will use Acronis VSS Provider for taking snapshots.

Software - System provider (selected by default)
VSS will use the system provider (Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider) for taking
snapshots. We recommend choosing the system provider when backing up application servers
(Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, or Active Directory).

Software - A software provider
In most cases, VSS will use the Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider.

Hardware - Select automatically
VSS will use the hardware-based provider that supports the source volume. If no hardware-based
provider is found, backups will be created by means of Acronis Backup without taking snapshots.
Note: Using a hardware snapshot provider may require administrative privileges.
Do not use VSS
If you select Do not use VSS, the data snapshot will be taken by Acronis Backup.
Choose Do not use VSS if your database is incompatible with VSS. Backup process is fastest, but data
consistency of the applications whose transactions are not completed at the time of taking a
snapshot cannot be guaranteed. You may use Pre/Post data capture commands (p. 122) to indicate
which commands should be performed before and after taking the snapshot. This ensures that the
data is being backed up in a consistent state. For instance, specify pre-data capture commands that
will suspend the database and flush all caches to ensure that all transactions are completed; and
specify post-data capture commands that will resume the database operations after the snapshot is
taken.
About volume shadow copy writers
Before backing up the data of VSS-aware applications, make sure that the volume shadow copy
writers for those applications are turned on by examining the list of writers that are present in the
operating system. To view this list, run the following command:
vssadmin list writers
Note: In Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, the writer for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 is
turned off by default. For instructions on how to turn it on, see the following Microsoft knowledge base article
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/838183/.
Enabling VSS Full backup
The preset is: Disabled.
This option can be useful when you protect Microsoft Exchange Server with a disk-level backup (p.
279).
If enabled, logs of Microsoft Exchange Server and of other VSS-aware applications (except for
Microsoft SQL Server) will be truncated after each successful full, incremental or differential backup.
Leave this option disabled in the following cases:

If you use Acronis Backup Agent for Exchange or third-party software for backing up the
Exchange Server data. This is because the log truncation will interfere with the consecutive
transaction log backups.