So I'm curious what kind of file properties MS assigns to VSC files, assuming the VSC service uses a traditional file structure. I want to know if they are included on a full and/or incremental back up of a drive, or if they are marked as a system file and left out.
If it matters we are using TSM as our back up solution.
I suspect this is more of a Windows based question versus something specific to TSM...but I could be wrong.
Hoping @DeusQain or @wendell might know the answer or point in the right direction.
I could spend the next 5 hours reading about it and experimenting to answer the question in a paragraph, but I'm going to go ahead and let you do that 5 hrs worth of work~
Shadow Copy on Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Copy
Backup and Recovery Overview for Windows Server 2008 R2
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979562%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
Volume Shadow Copy Service
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee923636%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
Shadow Copies of Shared Folders
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771305.aspx
Remember that the VSS is a windows service, and they bound it with a similar sounding backup program that uses that service. My guess would be it's implemented via NTFS streams, but I'm not sure on the implementation details, hence the 5 hrs of reading to figure out.
If TSM (IBM's imaging/backup solution) is byte-per-byte it, by definition, will capture both streams, but if it's file-by-file then those types usually only copy the first stream. That said, I don't know of the VSS implementation in server systems uses ntfs streams at all, that's just how I would implement it personally if I was MS.