Backup and Recovery Using VSS Writer

 

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, System Center 2012 SP1 - Operations Manager

With System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1), Operations Manager, VSS writers offer a shortcut for backing up the Operations Manager and Audit Collection Services databases using the SQL VSS writer, providing an alternative mechanism of selecting what to be backed up, versus using the user interface in Data Protection Manager (DPM) or some other application to select the SQL databases. Backup and restoration can be accomplished with DPM or any other backup application because we employ a generic VSS Writer.

The writer IDs are:

  • Audit Collection Service: 2488ec56-996a-4716-8165-7436a683

  • Operations Manager: 5ACDEAFF-4A8C-4FCE-BB24-BFCB4CD8A572

The VSS writers make it easy to discover what databases to backup, showing all the SQL data being used by Operations Manager and Audit Collection Service under the respective nodes.

Note

For Disaster recovery you need to follow the instructions at Disaster Recovery in System Center 2012 - Operations Manager with VSS writer based recovery.

Note

You must have local administrative credentials to back up and restore Operations Manager and ACS data stores.