Lenovo Storage E1024 (English) Lenovo Storage VSS Hardware Provider Installati - Page 6

1 The VSS hardware provider and the CAPI Proxy The provider described in this document is used with Lenovo S3200 and S2200 storage systems in Microsoft Windows Server environments. It is available for download as separate installation files: • A VSS hardware provider. • A CAPI Proxy that enables in-band management from host-based applications. The CAPI Proxy is necessary to enable the provider. It should be installed on all hosts that will run the provider. About VSS Microsoft Windows Server operating systems provide enhanced services for managing storage area networks, including Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). VSS, with its standard set of extensible APIs, provides the backup infrastructure for Windows Server, as well as a mechanism for creating consistent point-in-time copies of data known as shadow copies. VSS provides interfaces to ensure that volume shadow copies are in a consistent state. The Lenovo Storage VSS Hardware Provider installs on a server running Windows Server 2012 and enables VSS to create hardware-resident shadow copies on any array attached to the server. With the Lenovo Storage VSS Hardware Provider and VSS, you can create a shadow copy of the source data volume on one server and then import the shadow copy onto another server (or back to the same server). This VSS provider does not include user interfaces or standalone functionality. Instead it enables other applications to manage Lenovo storage systems. diskshadow.exe and vshadow.exe are useful command-line tools for creating, deleting, querying, and managing shadow copies in a Microsoft Windows environment. Diskshadow is included in Windows Server 2008 and subsequent releases, while VShadow is available from Microsoft as part of the Windows SDK. Supported VSS Features The Lenovo Storage VSS Hardware Provider supports the following features provided by the Windows VSS subsystem: • Creating shadow copies/snapshots. • Exporting shadow copies/snapshots: prepare for use in another Windows Server system. • Importing snapshots: prepare for local use after export from another Windows Server system. • Determining when snapshots can be deleted and deleting them. • Reverting snapshots using the diskshadow resync subcommand or vshadow -resync option. NOTE: Before you can create shadow copies, you must create a snap pool and enable shadow copies for a master volume by using your configuration management tool. See Creating shadow copies on page 8 for more information. Installation requirements Each of the software components described in this document can be downloaded from Lenovo. Navigate to http://support.lenovo.com, select Product Support, and navigate to Storage Products. All VSS and CAPI packages are shipped in a single archive file, such as: lenovo-storage-vss-3.4.x.x.zip This file contains separate .zip files for each individual component, such as lenovo-storage-capi-proxy-3.4.x.x.zip and lenovo-storage-vss-provider-3.4.x.x-x64.zip The version 3.4 Lenovo Storage VSS Hardware Provider requires the following software: • A supported operating system: 6