Hi

> > This is what was called NTBACKUP since NT 4.0.
> This was merely an agent to shutdown exchange services for the time taken

to backup the critical files which were locked for writing by exchange
server.

I don't know for older versions, but at least beginning on exchange 5.5 on
nt 4.0, ntbackup did ONLINE BACKUPs, it didn't shut down anything.

> It IS a problem - a real one. Don't confuse DB server transactions and the

way the FB engine writes and reads from the file under it's sole control
iwht wht the OS does when it copies a file. They are not reading the file in
the same way. The OS only knows disk sectors while the db engine knows db
pages as well.

> The only way NTBACKUP would work successfully all the time is for it to

have an "agent" which stops the fb server while it copies the gdb file, then
starts the fb server again.

No, I think you don't understand the point of volume shadow copies.
Volume shadow copies (from a semantic point of view) clone all files
atmoically. The database server can continue working on its version, the
shadow copy has it's own. For the very short period of time, the os requires
for instantiating the volume shadow, all accesses are stalled.

> Again - they may be like db transactions semantically but they are not the

same. The OS and NTBACKUP do not know about the way FB structures it's paged
data.

It simply does not need to. As power failures don't need to.

Regards,
Steffen