On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 10:09:39 -0800
sachrodr <bacula-forum AT backupcentral DOT com> wrote:

> I am running bacula backup with VSS enabled backup on windows 2008
> servers,but when i tested the disaster recovery using bacula
> restored, windows 2008 servers didn't come up. do you guys think VSS
> enabled backup take System state backup too ?

No, it doesn't.

VSS is just a service which works like this:
1. A process aware of VSS (certain system services and some external
   services with Microsoft SQL Server being a notable example)
   registers itself in the VSS subsystem.
2. When Bacula is about to back the files up, it tells the VSS
   subsystem to take a snapshot.
3. The VSS subsystem notifies all the processes registered in it
   to bring the files they have open into some consistent state
   (usually by flushing any write-buffered data they might have).
4. The processes do that and report back they've finished.
5. The VSS subsystem waits on the processes it has notified to
   hear back from each of them, and once this is done, it creates
   the snapshot of the filesystem and hands it off to Bacula.
6. Bacula uses it to read the files it was told to back up.

As you can see, VSS is just a way to ensure the snapshot of the
data to back up is in a consistent state.  That is, the files backed up
using it has sensible contents when restored.

To make a full server's backup you must instruct Bacula to run a
pre-backup job which would use the server's native tools to back the
system state up and then make sure the resulting archive is backed up
during the backup phase which follows.  A post-backup job might then
get rid of that archive, if needed.  See [1] for more info.

Your recovery plan should include restoring that system state backup.

Consider [2] for reading.
Also plain googling for bacula+wbadmin will bring a lot of information
to read through.

1. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753201
2. https://sebastian.marsching.com/wiki/Windows/Bacula

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