IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for Windows, Version 4.1

Mounting VSS snapshots to remote servers

You can mount VSS snapshots to servers that other users can access.

Before you begin

The mount command with remote options of a backup requires a hardware provider that supports transportable snapshots. In addition, the Import VSS snapshots only when needed configuration option and remote Windows PowerShell must be enabled. To enable Windows PowerShell Remoting, refer to the Microsoft documentation for this service.

When you select the Import VSS snapshots only when needed option, if the VSS hardware provider does not support transportable snapshots, or, if no hardware provider is available, the backup completes, but the VSS snapshot is imported and is not transportable. Do not attempt to create backups that contain a mixture of hardware providers that do and do not support transportable snapshots. If you attempt this type of backup scenario, the backup operations fail.

About this task

With the command-line interface, the following tasks can be completed. These tasks assume there are at least three servers in the environment: Server A, Server B, and Server C. The backup that is created on Server A is remote-mounted to Server B.

On Server A, complete a local backup query to show the backup is mounted on Server B.
From Server C, complete a remote backup query of Server A. The query shows the backup is mounted on Server B.

For more information about the command-line interface commands that can be used to complete these tasks, see the following sections:

TDPEXCC

TDPSQLC

FCMCLI

What to do next

When you use the command-line interface to mount VSS snapshots to remote servers, there are a few factors to remember:

No Fast Restore of the full backup on the server where the backup is created.
There is read-only access to all local and remote mounts.
After a backup is locally or remotely mounted, the backup cannot be remotely mounted to a different location.

When a backup is remote-mounted and the backup is deleted, the state of the mount point varies. The state of the mount point depends on the VSS hardware provider and storage device used. When a backup is mounted remotely, the backup can be deleted. When a local persistent VSS snapshot is created, a source and target volume relationship is created. The local persistent VSS snapshot is created on your storage device. In this scenario, when a mount command with remote options operation occurs, the target volume is imported and mounted to the server that sends the request for the remote operation.

During the deletion of a backup, the snapshots and the relationship between the source and target volumes on the storage device are also deleted. However, the target volume that is imported and mounted might continue to exist. In addition, the target volume might not be available to the server where the mount command with remote options occurred. The operations that occur to the target volume depend on the VSS hardware provider and the storage device implementation.

There are two common backup deletion scenarios to consider when you use the mount command with remote options:

The manual deletion of a remotely mounted backup: The Tivoli® Storage FlashCopy® Manager software can delete any backup by using the command-line interface or Microsoft Management Console.
The expiration process: When either the maximum number of backup versions or the maximum number of days to retain a backup (as specified by the Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager policy) is exceeded, the associate backup is expired and deleted.

When you enter a mount or query command with the /remotecomputer option, if a problem occurs, enable command-line interface tracing to debug the problem. For tracing, append /tracefile=filename.trc /traceflag=service to the command.

After trace is enabled, the command-line interface generates trace files for the local and remote systems. On the local system, you can view the file that you specified. In addition, on the local and remote systems, a trace file is also created. This file has the same name as the file stored on the local system and the file name concludes with the following suffix appended to the file type extension: _remote

For example, on the local system, after you enable command-line interface tracing, the following files are created:

filename.trc
filename.trc_remote

On the remote system, after you enable command-line interface tracing, the following file is created: filename.trc_remote

In addition to the command-line interface trace file, enable tracing on the agent. Again, enable tracing on both the local and remote systems.

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