Volume Shadow Copy Service

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Purpose

The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is a set of COM interfaces that implements a framework to allow volume backups to be performed while applications on a system continue to write to the volumes.

For an introduction to VSS for system administrators, see Volume Shadow Copy Service in the TechNet Library.

Run-time requirements

VSS is supported on Microsoft Windows XP and later. For information about run-time requirements for a particular programming element, see the Requirements section of the documentation for that element.

All 32-bit VSS applications (requesters, providers, and writers) must run as native 32-bit or 64-bit applications. Running them under WOW64 is not supported. For more information, see Supported Configurations and Restrictions.

Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP: Running 32-bit VSS requesters under WOW64 is supported, but not for system-state backups. Running 32-bit VSS providers and writers under WOW64 is not supported. Support for running 32-bit requesters under WOW64 was removed in Windows Vista and subsequent versions.

Note

A shadow copy that was created on Windows Server 2003 R2 or Windows Server 2003 cannot be used on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008. A shadow copy that was created on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2008 cannot be used on a computer that is running Windows Server 2003. However, a shadow copy that was created on Windows Server 2008 can be used on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2, and vice versa.

 

In this section

Topic Description
Overview
 Describes the VSS object model, backup and restore strategies, and how to create VSS providers, requesters, and writers.
Reference
 Describes VSS classes, data types, enumerations, functions, interfaces, and structures.

 

Additional resources

Resource Description
Windows Vista and later VSS is available in the Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK). You can install the SDK for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 from the Windows Download Center. You can also download the ISO version of the SDK from the Windows Download Center. Previous versions of the SDK can be downloaded from the Windows SDK Download Page.
Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP VSS is available in the Volume Shadow Copy Service 7.2 SDK, which you can download from the Windows Download Center. Note that the 64-bit vssapi.lib files in the directories under the Win2003\Obj directory can be used for the 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.