Windows Server Backup (Windows 2008 and SBS2008)

Windows Server Backup
I took some brief notes on the subject a while back when I attended a Windows 2008 class. It seemed oddly devoid of features. I was hoping that SBS2008 would add some functionality to it, but I was disappointed. Perhaps Microsoft has been under a lot of pressure from third-party backup software vendors, who wanted the built-in backup software to be less appealing.

Update: I have since learned that there is an important difference in the SBS2008 implementation of Windows backup: SBS will decide for itself whether to run a full or differential backup, which is very useful. In Windows Server 2008, you must go back into the configuration after running your first full backup, and change the backup type to incremental, where it will stay.

Microsoft summarizes Windows Server Backup very well, as follows:
Windows Server Backup is intended for use by everyone who needs a basic backup solution-from small business owners to IT professionals in large enterprises. However, the design makes it especially well-suited for smaller organizations or individuals who are not IT professionals.

Reading between the lines, we can understand this to mean: “Use this built-in stuff to get the job done in a pinch, but if you want the usual backup software whiz-bang features, buy something else.

Not all bad, though:
You are probably familiar with Volume Shadow Copy. Maybe you’ve used it to get some files back without having to put a tape in the drive. Maybe you’ve even wished you could store that information on a separate disk, and have more granular control over when it runs. Well, that’s pretty much what you have here. Basically, the built-in backup is very good for keeping a local copy of your data that will do in a pinch – but you’ll want to be sure to have an offsite backup with a good rotation schedule as well. Don’t keep all of your eggs in this basket.

Microsoft has this to say about how the data is backed up and stored:
“Windows Server Backup uses Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and block-level backup technology to back up and recover your operating system, files and folders, and volumes. After the first full backup is created, you can configure Windows Server Backup to automatically run incremental backups by saving only the data that has changed since the last backup. Even if you choose to always perform full backups, your backup will take less time than it did in earlier versions of Windows.”

For completeness, I might add that when you do a manual one-time backup, it writes to a VHD file.

Online References:
Here is Microsoft’s official word on Windows Server Backup:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770266.aspx

I found an article on the intertubes that describes WSB (Windows Server Backup) from an outside perspective in pretty good detail.
http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid1_gci1324328,00.html

Here is a command reference for the WBadmin utility:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754015.aspx
Powershell is also supported, though I did not find a direct link for that.

Since there are such good articles available, this description will focus on the key points that I found most noteworthy:

• There is no tape drive support.
• You can run backups to a UNC path or DVD drive, but only a manual one-time full backup.
• I can only imagine the DVD drive being useful for a one-time system state backup.
• WSB will only do the full/incremental cycle on a dedicated local disk, whether that be an internal hard disk, USB mass storage device, eSATA, etc.
• When you prepare the locally attached device for scheduled backups, it is formatted by Windows Backup, and you cannot use it for anything but backups. The drive letter is removed. You can add a drive letter back to it, but when you try to open it, you get “Access is denied”. The security tab shows Administrators having full control, but you can’t access it.
• You cannot exclude individual files/folders. You select things to back up at the volume level only. The command-line mode does offer a way to back up the system state only (see the command line reference above). Restoring gives you options for restoring individual files/folders, “Applications” (Exchange and SharePoint, for example), and entire volumes. You can restore them locally, or to another server.

2008 Backup uses a set of full, plus incremental backups.

The backup of my C drive in my test environment was fairly quick. It took about 10 minutes to back up 26GB of OS data, resulting in a VHD file that was roughly 13GB. Of course, a fresh lab machine always seems faster than production machines. When I went into the recovery area, all folders seemed to be present. The backup status detail showed that it used 13.82GB of space for that backup. That seems right for a bare-bones SBS 2008 installation (23GB uncompressed). The next two backups used 70MB of space, followed by 46MB of space. I’d done nothing except look around in the backup software. WSB will manage the space on the disk itself, deleting old backups to make room for new ones. it seemed pretty smart about knowing when to make a full and when to make an incremental backup. I performed a couple of one-time backups to USB disk – one was a “copy” (didn’t reset the archive attribute), and the other was a normal backup. WSB reacted appropriately on the next backup run in each case. Update: It is only SBS 2008 which intelligently handles full vs incremental backups. In Windows Server 2008, you must manage this manually.

When doing an individual file/folder recovery, WSB will refuse to write the files back to the original location if there is a system file anywhere in the selections. Since it considers desktop.ini to be a system file, this can get in the way quite often. You can work around this by restoring to an alternate location, with security, and move the files to their proper location afterward.

Here’s a brief comparison to StorageCraft’s ShadowProtect:

Windows Server Backup will do nearly as well as ShadowProtect. There is not quite as much flexibility, and there is no provision for media rotation to handle offsite backups – but if those are being handled by some other process, WSB will do a good enough job of local backup and restore. The log information and alerting features are not as good in WSB as they are in SP.

Tags: backup, block-level, ntbackup, server, shadowprotect, volume shadow copy, vss, windows