We've been running tests on our new E2007 servers to get the backup/restore procedures in place. Single E2007 server on Win2008. Total of 10 SG's with 10 DB's. All SG's use LCR toreplica LUNs.LCR failover has been tested and works.Our Streaming-backup agent (Arcserve 12) can backup the LCR passive copy instead of the active copy. This way the active LUN is less I/O loaded during backups. Since Streaming-backups use VSS API's in E2007 we also enabled VSS on the LCR Lun's.So we run a backup withing Arcserve and it seems ok. The Log shows that a Snapshot was created just prior to the backup. So it seems to be using VSS. We cannot see the Snapshot in the volume VSS window though.Now the restore. Here things go wrong, perhaps because I'm not sureI'm doing it right.When I restore, I asume this will be done on the passive LCR LUN, since that was originally backed up using VSS. So I dismount the active copy DB and I Suspend LCR with the idea that after the VSS restore the passive LCR copy(older version)will be the one that needs to be activated.But within Arcserve this Restore Job fails with error: 27-3-2009 15:27:00AE9650 The volume shadow service provider has reported a bad state for the operation.VSSAdmin list writersshows the Exchange writer to be stable.Any ideas ?Or am I doing it wrong. So how do I go about this then.RichardEdit: Hmm, shouldn't have put this in Admin I guess.

The streaming API and the VSS API are two different APIs.Arcservre very likely supports both and decides which one to use.You can backup the passive database with VSS but the restore always have to go to the active copy.The VSS shadow copy is very likely deleted automatically by Arcserve after the backup is done.Restore:suspend replicationdismount the databaserun the restore including mount of the databaseupdate storage group copy to get the files to the passive database and log file locationresume replication

Yes, J-Hs said, the restore task should be performed on active copy VSS restore: All four types of backups can be restored to the active copy VSS backups cannot be restored to a storage group copy location using Exchange VSS components -----------Refer to <Database Backup and Restore> Please try the restore again on the active copy. If we still get same error info, please contact CA Customer Support for assistance If the MS Exchange Writer state is in Stable status it may indicate a more serious problem requiring CA Customer Support assistance -----------Refer to <Backup/Restore of Exchange 2007 database error AE9650 The volume shadow service provider has reported a bad state for the operation>