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First Off, We interface with the onboard Microsoft Backup Service available on every Windows OS starting with Vista to present day OS for both workstations and servers.
Each OS uses a different version of Microsoft's Backup Services so you will get different results based on each version. We will try to define those differences here so you can better understand how to leverage the plugin for your needs. To get a full listing of all available functions and how they are deployed please visit https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ... 54015.aspx.
Since each OS can be some what different in what we can do with it we will list by OS what features area available.
Windows Vista, 7:
Both Windows 7 and Vista are missing the ability to internally schedule a daily backup, so we have to treat them differently then the other OS types like Windows 8 - Server 2012. To mimic a daily scheduled backup we preform a standard on demand backup daily using Windows Scheduler and a Batch script that is fired off by the Task Scheduler. As of Windows 8 this was no longer needed as the Microsoft Backup Service added the feature to "enable" a scheduled backup.
Targets must be one of the following storage location for backup. Requires a hard disk drive letter (f:), a volume GUID-based path in the format of \\?\Volume{GUID}, or a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to a remote shared folder (\\<servername>\<sharename>\). By default, the backup will be saved at: \\<servername>\<sharename>\WindowsImageBackup\<ComputerBackedUp>\.
For Windows Server 2008
Targets must be one of the following storage location for backup. Requires you to specify a destination for backups as a disk identifier (see Remarks). The disk is formatted before use, and any existing data on it is permanently erased.
For Windows Server 2008 R2 and later
Targets must be one of the following storage location for backup. Requires you to specify the location as a disk, volume, or Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path to a remote shared folder (\\<servername>\<sharename>\). By default, the backup will be saved at: \\<servername>\<sharename>\WindowsImageBackup\<ComputerBackedUp>\. If you specify a disk, the disk will be formatted before use, and any existing data on it is permanently erased. If you specify a shared folder, you cannot add more locations. You can only specify one shared folder as a storage location at a time.
If you save a backup to a remote shared folder, that backup will be overwritten if you use the same folder to back up the same computer again. In addition, if the backup operation fails, you may end up with no backup because the older backup will be overwritten, but the newer backup will not be usable.
For Windows°Vista and Windows Server 2008,
Includes are specified by a comma-delimited list of volume drive letters, volume mount points, or GUID-based volume names to include in the backup.
For Windows°7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and later
Includes are specified as a comma-delimited list of items to include in the backup. You can include multiple files, folders, or volumes. Volume paths can be specified using volume drive letters, volume mount points, or GUID-based volume names. If you use a GUID-based volume name, it should be terminated with a backslash (\). You can use the wildcard character (*) in the file name when specifying a path to a file.
VSS Full
Performs a full back up using the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). All files are backed up, each file's history is updated to reflect that it was backed up, and the logs of previous backups may be truncated.
Do not use this parameter if you are using a product other than Windows Server Backup to back up applications that are on the volumes included in the current backup. Doing so can potentially break the incremental, differential, or other type of backups that the other backup product is creating.
VSS Copy
For Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and later, performs a copy backup using VSS. All files are backed up but the history of the files being backup up is not updated so you preserve the all the information on which files where changed, deleted, and so on, as well as any application log files. Using this type of backup does not affect the sequence of incremental and differential backups that might happen independent of this copy backup. A copy backup cannot be used for incremental or differential backups or restores.
AllCriitical
Specifies that all critical volumes (volumes that contain operating system's state) be included in the backups. This parameter is useful if you are creating a backup for bare metal recovery.
SystemState
For Windows°7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and later, creates a backup that includes the system state in addition to any other items that you specified with the -include parameter. The system state contains boot files (Boot.ini, NDTLDR, NTDetect.com), the Windows Registry including COM settings, the SYSVOL (Group Policies and Logon Scripts), the Active Directory and NTDS.DIT on Domain Controllers and, if the certificates service is installed, the Certificate Store. If your server has the Web server role installed, the IIS Metadirectory will be included. If the server is part of a cluster, Cluster Service information will also be included.
User and Password
For Windows Server 2008 R2 and later, specifies the user with write permission to the backup storage destination (if it is a remote shared folder). The user needs to be a member of the Administrators group or Backup Operators group on the computer that is getting backed up.
Things to consider with storage of backups.
Windows Vista, 7:
The backups overwrite each other daily so you only ever have but 1 restore point.
For Windows Server 2008 R2 and later
Storing backups on USB drives or other physically attached drives allows you to keep as many recovery points as the storage will hold. This is not available when using Network Shares.
When using local storage to hold backup data Microsoft manages the storage. After you configure a disk for a scheduled backup, Windows Server Backup automatically manages the disk usage—you do not need to be concerned about running out of disk space after repeated backups. Windows Server Backup will automatically reuse the space occupied by older backups when creating new backups. The management tool displays the backups that are available as well as the disk usage information. This can help you plan for provisioning additional storage to meet your recovery objective.
Automatic Disk usage management feature comes into play when Windows Server Backup detects that the backup target does not have enough space to accommodate the backup while backup is in progress. The way Windows Server Backup creates space for new backup is by shrinking the storage space allocated for snapshots (called diff area). As a result, one or more older snapshots (and hence backup versions corresponding to those snapshots) occupying the diff area that got shrunk get deleted. Before shrinking diff area, WSB determines whether shrinking the diff area can free up the requisite space so the backup can happen. If enough free space can get created, WSB goes ahead with the shrinking and continues with the backup. WSB will not shrink the diff area to less than 1/8 of Target volume size as we do not want to lose all past backups just to accommodate this one. This is why sometimes backup fail with target out of disk space in spite of automatic disk usage management feature in Windows Server Backup.