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Rammy CharlesFlag for United States of America

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Windows-Based File Server (SMB) and Point in Time Backups (Shadow Copy?)

Looking to find the best way to serve Office and PDF files to users from a Windows 2012 server with the ability to take point in time backups of the files or volume. Would a regular Windows 2012 file server role with Shadow Copy/VSS on be able to do that?
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Lee W, MVP
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Point in time meaning predetermined snapshot schedules like every two hours or every day or week.

If VSS has the known flaws and don't want to do the SharePoint route (rather use regular Windows SMB files), what other options are there?
Just about any backup solution (Including windows server backup) will give you the ability to perform backups on a 2 hours schedule. They will generally do a backup of the VSS snapshots that get taken regularly, but will be able to retain that data in a less flaky manner. That's generally the best way to provide that level of recovery. If you are able to work with the limitations of Windows Server Backup (it's very picky about backup storage. You can't make use of the scheduled incremental backup features if you use a network share), it's an ideal solution for handling File server backups.

Edit to add: Also, if you're hoping to find a solution that will provide some protection from Ransomware, *do not* rely only on VSS. Almost every ransomware variant out there is designed to clear out all shadow copies before running.
Since Server 2003 introduced it, I've used VSS and Shadow Copies on dozens of servers in at least a dozen clients and have never experienced one issue with it.  

Is there a potential that it doesn't backup a given item, sure but most backup methods these days leverage VSS it's so reliable.  I very much disagree with Adam.  I rely on it heavily and have never experienced a corruption.  It is NOT a perfect solution... it has limitations - the drive dies and your copies are GONE... so while it's a great short term recovery solution it should NOT be your only backup method.
And I also disagree with Adam on the ransomware issue - properly designed networks will not have that problem.  End users who are not domain or server admins cannot alter the settings of VSS.  At best (worst) ransomware causes ALL files to change every bit (literally).  VSS is block level and can easily keep versions of huge files without taking up the same space as the huge file since the huge file often only has a fewl "blocks" change.  But when ransomware infects, ALL blocks are changed.  This results in VSS using up most or all of it's space and wiping out the historical copies.  UNLESS your VSS space is significantly larger than the used disk space.

I just used VSS to restore a church's data that was encrypted by an end user.  VSS settings were MUCH larger than the used space and it wasn't an issue.  Best part is they lost less than 30 minutes of data because the VSS snapshot took place at 9:20 am and infection happened at 9:42am.
I've had constant trouble with VSS losing data or just not having the files I needed to restore. Just yesterday I had to deal with an issue where VSS shadows had all of a specific user's files *except* the one I needed to recover (this was likely due to it being a desktop and not a server). Just a little searching on google can show I'm not the only one in that boat. But I've also had situations where VSS saved the day. It's extremely important to have it enabled and properly configured, but it's just a bad practice to rely on *only* VSS for backup and recovery. And if you want to be as close as can be to 100% certain that you'll be able to recover files properly and always have them available for backup, you need to use an additional backup solution. VSS isn't sufficient in that regard.
How does the Windows 2012 local VSS feature compare to something like a enterprise storage solution like EMC VNX or NetApp snapshots ?
Generally, any third party solution that does backups against a Windows Server will actively utilize VSS snapshots for the file system if there is any level of Application awareness. VM shapshot solutions usually utilize a VSS Hardware interface driver to access VSS when performing a snapshot. This is to ensure Applications like Exchange and SQL are able to truncate transaction logs following a backup operation. So technically, there's no way to compare those solutions to VSS because they use VSS to function properly. The primary difference, though, is that NetApp and EMC's snapshot systems will perform a full VSS shapshot when they do their work and retain the snapshot data in longer-term storage with (usually) a much greater amount of space available for that storage.
Lets be clear, I *ONLY* used server based VSS - I do not rely on client VSS.  That, I will grant you has been unpredictable but I largely blame MS for that since they can't seem to decide how they want it to work on the client.