HP StorageWorks Application Recovery Manager Administrator's Guide (T4395-96004, February 2008)

Introduction
Overview
Chapter 12
Overview
A traditional backup process is based on the direct communication
between the backup application and the application whose data is
backed up. This backup method requires from the backup application an
individual interface for each application it backs up.
The number of applications on the market is constantly increasing. The
necessity of handling application specific features can cause difficulties
in backup, restore, and storage activities. An effective solution to this
problem is introducing a coordinator among the actors of the backup and
restore process.
Volume Shadow
Copy Service
Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is a software service introduced by
Microsoft on Windows operating systems. This service collaborates with
the backup application, applications to be backed up, shadow copy
providers, and the operating system kernel to implement the
management of volume shadow copies and shadow copy sets.
HP StorageWorks Application Recovery Manager supports the
integration with VSS.
The Application Recovery Manager Volume Shadow Copy integration
provides a unified communication interface that can coordinate backup
and restore of an application regardless of their specific features. With
this approach, a backup application does not need to handle each
application to be backed up specifically. However, the production
application as well as the backup application must conform to the VSS
specification.
Figure 1-1 and Figure 1-2 show the differences between the traditional
backup model and the model with the Application Recovery Manager
Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy integration.