How to create a shadow copy

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Published : April 8, 2005 | Updated : August 17, 2005

As part of the data protection process, Data Protection Manager (DPM) creates shadow copies, as scheduled, of each replica in a protection group. You establish the shadow copy schedule when you create a protection group or when you modify the protection options for an existing protection group. You can access the shadow copies on the DPM server to recover previous versions of data.

Occasionally, you may need to create a manual shadow copy of a replica. For example, you could create a manual shadow copy if you need to recover data and you want to ensure that you are using the latest possible shadow copy.

You can manually create a shadow copy from either the Protection task area or the Recovery task area.

To create a shadow copy from the Protection task area

  1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Protection on the navigation bar.

  2. Select the protected volume or share for which you want to create a shadow copy.

  3. In the Actions pane, click Manage shadow copies.

  4. In the Manage Shadow Copies dialog box, click Create.

    The new shadow copy is displayed in the shadow copy list.

To create a shadow copy from the Recovery task area

  1. In DPM Administrator Console, click Recovery on the navigation bar.

  2. On the Browse tab, under Servers with recoverable data, select the protected volume or share for which you want to create a shadow copy.

  3. In the Actions pane, click Create shadow copy now.

    The new shadow copy is displayed in the shadow copy list.

Note

DPM does not create a manual shadow copy unless the replica has been synchronized at least once since the last shadow copy was created. In this case, a message is displayed indicating that no synchronization has taken place since the last shadow copy was created. For more information, see How to synchronize a replica.

For some protection groups, shadow copies are created very quickly. In this case, you may not be able to successfully cancel a shadow copy job after it starts. If you inadvertently create an unwanted shadow copy, you can easily delete it.