Unless otherwise specified, a restore refers to the following VSS restore
types: VSS Fast
Restore and VSS Instant Restore.
When you submit a restore or mount request, all of the volumes
that are contained in the original snapshot set are imported. If the
number of volumes that are imported exceeds the maximum number of
allowable mapped volumes for the environment, the restore or mount
operation can fail.
Before you start a restore, review the following list:
- VSS restore
of the master database (msdb) must be done offline.
Therefore, the associated SQL Server instance must be stopped before
you run the restore. Attempting to restore a master database that
is online fails. Such an attempt can also disable subsequent VSS Backup and
VSS restore operations until the SQL Server VSS Writer
service is restarted.
- A VSS Instant Restore overwrites
the entire contents of the source volumes. However, you can avoid
overwriting the source volumes by setting the Instant Restore option
to False. This option bypasses volume-level
copy and uses file-level copy instead. For best results, ensure that
the source volume contains only the SQL database.
- When you run a VSS Instant Restore, there
is no check to verify that any other data (including other SQL databases
that are specified for restore) is present on the volume. Before you
run a VSS restore
operation that uses the VSS Instant Restore function,
verify that there is no other data on the volumes that are being restored.
If you want to avoid overwriting the source volumes, or if you are
restoring a single database from a VSS Backup that
is on local VSS shadow
volumes that contain more than one database, make sure to set the Instant
Restore option to False.
- VSS Instant Restore requires
that the local disk is not being accessed by other applications, for
example, Windows Explorer.