Implications and ability to use network drive for storing ShadowCopy data of local drive in Server 2003?

Question

I have ShadowCopy running on a shared drive in SBS 2003 that is 90% full. Checking the space, 10GB of that is currently being used for shadowcopy:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 8.814 GB
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 9.036 GB
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 10 GB

I would like to have a lot more space for shadowcopy, so I know that I can move and increase the shadowcopy storage from drive D to E like so:

vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=D: /On=E: /MaxSize=50GB

My questions:

Is it possible to have shadowcopy storage on a linked network drive (external NAS)?
If so, are there any performance implications in doing this?

Yes, it's a [NETGEAR RNDP4000-100NAS](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122087), but I don't see any info online regarding vss + iSCSI. Does iSCSI make the NAS appear as a local drive? — degenerate, Jul 25 '13 at 19:04

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 25 '13 at 20:46

Shadow copies can't be placed on network drives, as they need to be available before Windows loads the network stack. Shadow copies are integral to the NTFS file system; if you have issues with your VSS target at boot-up, the server won't boot. It'll fail at the same point as when you get an "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE", when a SCSI device can't be seen.

Implications and ability to use network drive for storing ShadowCopy data of local drive in Server 2003?

1 Answers1