Shadow Copy

[damanith1]

Hello All,
For some reason our shadow copy on one of our servers are only keeping 2 days worth of data. It used to keep at least a months worth. Our settings are:
Schedule- M-F 7:00am,12:00PM, and 4:00PM
Shadow Copy Disk Space
Used: 2687MB
Max: 85823MB

Total Disk Space
Free: 446255MB
Total: 858238MB

 

[damanith1]

OK. So I just figure out that we shouldn't have the shadow copies on the same partition as the user files. We have another server that is barely used. How can we redirect the shadow copies to this server? Is it as simple as mapping a drive and pointing it to the drive letter?

 

[58sniper]

That should work. But if the snapshots are large, that's going to eat bandwidth. Can you put another drive in the current server?

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[damanith1]

No. The server is maxed in drives and only has the 2 partitions. For future servers we are now going to use 3 partitions to alleviate this problem. I have tried mapping another drive but it doesn't show up in the selection menu. How can I redirect the shadow copies to another server? I tried searching via google and there are no articles detailing it. There are a few 3rd party apps that can do it for you but nothing else.

 

[LWComputingMVP]

I don't think it's possible to store VSS data on a network drive. Only on another local disk (similar to Pagefiles and other local only data).

Add a disk. Don't have enough room, install an eSATA controller and add an external disk.

 

[58sniper]

For future servers we are now going to use 3 partitions to alleviate this problem.

The number of partitions doesn't matter if they are spread across the same number of drives. At the very least, you should have one mirror of the OS, and one array for the data. Those should be on separate RAID arrays (and usually require at least 5 drives). You can always add a separate USB drive or eSATA drive (or array), or even an external SCSI array.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[damanith1]

Yes. We have the OS mirrored on one array and the data on a separate Raid-5 array. MS recommends moving the stored images on a different partition to alleviate the problem so that was the thought behind having at least another partition, even if it is located on the same array as the data. Thanks for the quick responses.