Three things I learned about SCCM backups

Three things I learned about SCCM backups

1)      Do not store your backup on the same drive as your source files

2)      There is a VSS patch for Server 2003

3)      Back up on Secondary Sites are worthless

Backup on the same drive as your installation directory

Warning: Backup location and the sms data (installation directory) are on the same volume. Sms Backup creates snapshot of the volume using VSS services and then copies the data to the backup location. It is advisable to have the backup location on a different volume (different than the one that has SMS data and SMS database files), so that the writes to the volume is minimal when the volume snapshot is active.

Straight forward and easy; put it somewhere else.

VSS may fail on Windows Server 2003

Error: VSS_E_WRITERERROR_RETRYABLE. Error Code = 0x80,042,3f3.

The following hotfix is to resolve this issue

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/915331

Secondary Site backups are worthless

The following was buried in a blog post here:

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/archive/2009/11/10/configuration-manager-2007-october-help-file-update.aspx

Maintaining Configuration Manager 2007

How to Back Up a Secondary Site: Updated to remove the procedure to back up a secondary site because you cannot restore this backup by using the Site Repair Wizard. Instead, you must reinstall the secondary site. This information was also added to About the Site Repair Wizard.

For all the details and to download the update see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=71816b0f-de06-40e0-bce7-ad4b1e4377bb&displaylang=en