Using Orchestrator to take Volume Shadow Copies

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We have a pair of 2019 core servers running our file shares.
We also use System Center Orchestrator to automate some things.

 Here is how I set up Orchestrator to take initate VSS snapshots.
  1. Ensure that VSS is running ok on your fileserver and you can manually take a VSS snapshot - using vssadmin.
  2. Decide on your schedule - we do a snapshot every 2 hours.
  3. Create a Monitor Date/Time step configured to the required VSS schedule
  4. I found the only way to get VSS to run correctly was using PSEXEC to run the actual VSS snapshot 
  5. So make a Run Program step for each File Server, to run the following command line (replacing values where needed)
    1. psexec.exe -h -accepteula \\fileserver01 vssadmin create shadow /for=F:
    2. Make sure you enter an account in the Advanced and Security sections.  The account needs the correct permissions to create VSS snaps on the fileservers!
  7. I then do some error checking and logging based on this with failures also raising an email notification to the IT team.
    1. The links are set to look for a return of 0 as success

This all looks a bit like this with server names redacted!





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