Configuring Windows VSS for Rollback

03/26/2020 20 9881

DESCRIPTION:

This Article explains about how to configure VSS on windows computers for capture client rollback feature to work 

The capture client (Advanced) Rollback feature uses the Microsoft Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). This service saves a snapshot of the endpoint drives (physical and logical). The service saves changes of the drive to a new snapshot on an interval.

Note: VSS does not save copies of mapped network shares.

RESOLUTION:

• On the endpoint, start cmd with Run as Administrator.
• Run: vssadmin list shadows
• In the output, see the shadow copies of the Agent. The Type is: Application Rollback

If there are no copies, please verify if Volume Shadow Copy Service has been enabled/running, if not, enable the service. As the shadow copies will not be saved and Rollback will not work if the VSS service is disabled on endpoints, hence make sure VSS service has been enabled and shadow copies are saved periodically. 

Note: once you change/enable VSS service to Manual or Automatic, the Agent does not take a snapshot until the endpoint is rebooted.

Note: Shadow copies can take up huge space on your hard drive. This is especially important on virtual systems. We recommend you to set the minimum VSS percent disk utilization to 10%and not to be less than 5%. VSS space configuration changes the number of stored copies. When the allocated space is filled, the next VSS snapshot replaces older copies.

Command to set the Disk space to used for windows VSS

vssadmin Add ShadowStorage /For=drive /On=storage_drive /MaxSize=percent%

For example: vssadmin Add ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=10%

To see used space in Windows 7 and higher: