Hyper-V VSS Provider

Hello,

Today Nutanix supports the use of VSS for SMB shares with Hyper-V. This is not based on a Nutanix provided VSS provider but instead uses a native Windows provider in conjunction with the MSFSRVP protocol. Here's an overview:

With Windows Server 2012, Microsoft introduced “VSS for SMB file shares” which allows for backup vendors to perform application consistent shadow copies for data stored on SMB 3.0 or higher shares. As a part of this functionality, a new protocol called “File Server Remote VSS Protocol” (MSFSRVP) was implemented to coordinate snapshots with remote file shares. Nutanix has implemented the MSFSRVP protocol and supports the use of VSS for SMB File Shares against Nutanix containers. This integration performs a snapshot of the entire Nutanix container for the purpose of creating a temporary point-in-time backup source. The general process when using VSS with Hyper-V and Nutanix SMB 3.0 shares is as follows:

1. Backup software, such as Veeam or Commvault sends a backup request to a VSS requestor, commonly deployed as an agent.
2. The VSS requestor will gather writer information, including the UNC of the SMB file share path(s) associated with the VM or application
3. The VSS service will retrieve writer metadata and prepare the application VSS writers involved by requesting that writers flush buffers and hold writes. In the case of virtual machine-level backups, this includes the creation of a virtual machine checkpoint.
4. The VSS service will send a shadow copy creation request for the SMB UNC paths previously discovered. The VSS File Share Shadow Copy Provider manages this process.
5. The VSS File Share Shadow Copy Provider will forward the shadow copy request to the appropriate Nutanix SMB share(s) using the MSFSRVP protocol.
6. Nutanix will create a snapshot at the SMB share level and return a UNC path representing the snapshot location.
7. The File Share Shadow Copy Provider will return the snapshot location to the backup application via its VSS requestor. The backup application can then perform a backup using the Nutanix snapshot represented by the returned UNC path.
8. Once the backup is complete, the backup software will request deletion of the shadow copy. Subsequently, the snapshot created by Nutanix is deleted, and the process is complete.

For more information, an example of how this functionality is used with Veeam and Nutanix can be found in the following best practices documentation: http://go.nutanix.com/rs/nutanix/images/Veeam_on_Nutanix_with_Hyper-V_BP.pdf