New Functionality Available in Windows Server 2003

The Windows Server 2003 release of the Volume Shadow Copy Service contains the following new functionality:

• Support for selectability for restore in addition to and on an equal basis with selectability for backup (previously just referred to as selectability). See Working with Selectability and Logical Paths for more information.
• Introduction of a BackupShutdown event indicating that a VSS-compliant backup application (requester) has shut down, whether the backup attempt has properly completed or not. See Handling BackupShutdown Events for more information.
• Support for explicit writer-component dependencies. A means for describing and supporting the situations where a component (and the component set it defines) managed by one writer cannot be backed up or restore independently of components managed by other writers. See Dependencies between Components Managed by Different Writers for more information.
• Full support for partial files operations. The backup and restore of segments of files by writers and requesters is now fully supported. See Working with Partial Files for more information on partial file operations.
• Introduction of differenced files to support incremental backup and restore operations. See Incremental and Differential Backups for more information.
• Introduction of backup schemas as a concept indicating the level of writer support for types of backup operations. See VSS_BACKUP_SCHEMA for more information.
• Support for requester specification of new file restore destinations (new target locations) during restore operations. See Working with New Targets during Restore for more information.
• Support for conditional restore at reboot time. See VSS_RME_RESTORE_AT_REBOOT_IF_CANNOT_REPLACE (VSE_RESTOREMETHOD_ENUM) for more information.
• Definition of a restore state and restore type. See VSS_RESTORE_TYPE and VSS Restore State for more information.
• Support for writer queries about shadow copy state. See CVssWriter::GetContext and CVssWriter::GetSnapshotDeviceName for more information.
• Support for transportable shadow copies in Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition. For more information, see Importing Transportable Shadow Copied Volumes.