A Windows service from Microsoft that makes application-consistent snapshots possible. Nutanix Guest Tools reaches it through its VSS package.
Also called VSS.
Read more: Nutanix docs
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Volume Shadow Copy Service in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Nutanix Guest Tools
Adds extra management abilities to a guest VM. The bundle holds VirtIO drivers, VSS support and the Nutanix Guest Agent.
- package
Workflows, actions, policies and other VCF Operations orchestrator elements are exported and imported in bundles of this kind; any dependencies are pulled in automatically, and what is inside is signed.
Related terms
- application-aware processing
Without this job option, a VM backup is merely crash-consistent. With it, Veeam uses VSS on Windows and handles application logs so that SQL Server, Exchange, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SharePoint or Active Directory data is transactionally consistent in backups and replicas.
- Hyper-V checkpoint
A snapshot of a Hyper-V VM's state at one moment. Production checkpoints use VSS in the guest; standard ones include what is in memory too.
- NTDS
On a domain controller, this covers ntds.dit (the AD DS database) with its logs, plus the NTDS folder, service and VSS writer.
- pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts
Custom scripts for applications that lack VSS support: one runs before the snapshot to put data into a consistent state and the other runs afterwards to resume normal operation. Each job can insist on them, tolerate their failure or skip them.
- Previous Versions
Lists older copies of a file in Explorer, drawn from VSS shadow copies or, where an Azure file share is mounted, its share snapshots.
- Production checkpoint
Hyper-V's default kind, capturing data-consistent state through VSS, or a file system freeze for Linux guests, but no memory. Choosing ProductionOnly makes creation fail instead of quietly using a standard checkpoint.
- VMware Tools quiescence
A job setting that asks VMware Tools to briefly halt file system and application activity inside the guest before the snapshot, so machines without VSS, Linux ones for example, are backed up consistently. Custom pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts can run too.