1. Storagecraft Drivers
2. Storagecraft Driver License
3. Storagecraft Volume Snapshot Driver
4. Storagecraft Driver Updater
5. Storagecraft Volume Snapshot Driver

Verify the status of the snapshot driver using 'stcinstchk.exe': stcinstchk.exe. Take a backup through the ShadowProtect Graphical User Interface (GUI) to ensure the snapshot driver installed correctly. If problems persist, please contact the StorageCraft Support team by creating a ticket here. 6 Loading Drivers 7 Using the Network Configuration Utility. StorageCraft Recovery Environment is a critical component of the overall ShadowProtect disaster.

Overview:

Servers are critical to everyday business operations. When a disaster occurs—whether large or small—you need your systems and data up and running again as fast as possible so business can get back to normal.

Use StorageCraft ShadowProtect SPX to reliably backup and protect your Windows servers and, when disaster strikes, recover your systems and data in minutes.

Fast and flexible recovery starts with a solid backup. SPX quickly and efficiently captures sector-level, image-based backups of your entire system, including the operating system (OS), applications, settings, services, and your data.

With SPX, you have the widest range of options to recover quickly and ensure minimal business downtime no matter the scope of disaster you're facing.

Storagecraft Drivers

With SPX, you have the ability to:

• Create multiple full and incremental backup schedules to best fit your needs.
• Customize your own mixed schedule of full and incremental backups at specified times.
• View detailed information about your Windows backup jobs in an easy-to-use management console.
• Mount a volume, restore a volume, verify a backup image, or use StorageCraft VirtualBoot technology to boot any backup image as a VM—all directly from the image chain browser or the patented job timeline feature.
• Back up SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, and other critical application servers.
• Automatically verify, consolidate, and replicate your backup image files with StorageCraft ImageManager.
• Convert backup images to a.VHD or.VMDK file for migration or restoration to a VM.
• Recover individual files and folders in seconds, without restoring the entire system.
• Recover full systems in minutes.
• Recover to the same physical or virtual environment with StorageCraft Recovery Environment.
• Recover to dissimilar hardware or a different hypervisor environment with StorageCraft Hardware Independent Restore technology.

Upgrade to StorageCraft Premium Support*

StorageCraft world-class premium support includes:

• 24-hour telephone support for Emergency support issues
• 24-hour online support for high, medium and low-severity support issues
• Priority placement in support queue during regular business hours

*StorageCraft Premium Support is purchased on an annual basis as an add-on to the StorageCraft Maintenance agreement.

ShadowProtect SPX

No two organizations have identical IT environments or business needs, but what is consistent across all organizations large and small is the need to protect themselves from unplanned downtime—both everyday disruptions and major disasters. With demands for 24/7 availability and data growth skyrocketing, an organization's ability to quickly recover its mission-critical systems and resume normal business operations is crucial.

Organizations need complete confidence that their entire IT environment—whether it's Windows or Linux, virtual or physical—is fully protected and can be reliably recovered in minutes. Since you never know what resources will be available to you in a disaster, the flexibility to be able to recover anywhere, anytime, every single time is unquestionably vital.

The award-winning StorageCraft ShadowProtect SPX provides backup and disaster recovery, data protection, and managed system migration for Windows and Linux systems on virtual and physical machines. If you're working in a mixed environment, you'll likely appreciate being able to run one backup and recovery software solution on all machines.

The Solution

Fast, flexible recovery starts with a solid backup. StorageCraft ShadowProtect SPX is the cornerstone of the StorageCraft Recovery Solution, providing comprehensive backup protection, reliable recovery, and system migration in a single, cross-platform solution that supports Windows and Linux systems on virtual and physical machines. How it works:

• Install ShadowProtect SPX on any server, desktop or laptop you wish to protect. SPX quickly and efficiently captures your entire system including the operating system (OS), applications, settings, services, and your data.
• Take regularly scheduled backups as often as every 15 minutes. Create custom full and incremental backup schedules to best fit your needs.
• Choose where to store your backup files. Write backup images to any internal, removable, or network storage locations.
• Easily monitor and manage your Windows and Linux backup jobs in the same SPX user interface or through the web-based management console StorageCraft ShadowControl.
• Rest assured you have multiple options to recover onsite and offsite in minutes. Recover entire systems or specific files and folders—all from the same backup image.

Use SPX in these scenarios

• Performing bare metal recovery after a server fails or a hypervisor succumbs to malware
• Restoring to the same hardware after a system error causes a server crash
• Restoring to the same hypervisor after the hypervisor or server crashes
• Migrating to new hardware or virtual environment
• Taking continual incremental backups so the business never risks losing more than a few minutes of data
• Restoring whole data volumes
• Recovering specific files and folders
• Managing a backup and disaster recovery solution within a mixed IT environment
• Testing new applications prior to introducing them into your production environment
• Testing your business's disaster recovery plan

Technical Information

These backup images include the operating system, applications, services, configuration settings, and data volumes.

• For Linux systems, a StorageCraft-built snapshot driver ensures you swiftly get a solid backup every time.
• For Windows systems, we leverage Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure solid backups, and our proprietary snapshot driver StorageCraft® Volume Snapshot Manager (VSM) makes sure those backups happen fast.

The award-winning ShadowProtect SPX gives you the ability to schedule backups to occur at regular intervals. Run the exact type of backup you want and do so on the days and at the times you want.

Once you have backup images, you have multiple fast recovery options.

Depending on the scope of the disaster you're facing, you can:

• Rapidly access missing files and folders by mounting and browsing a backup image
• Restore a Windows or Linux system to the same or different hardware or virtual environment in minutes
• Use the included StorageCraft VirtualBoot technology to:
  • Boot a backup image as a virtual machine (VM) for a quick, temporary fix
  • Boot a protected Windows system as a guest VM on a Hyper-V host (requires Windows Server 2012 R2)
  • Boot a protected Windows or Linux system to an ESXi host in a VMware vSphere cluster
  • Opt to migrate the protected Windows or Linux system to the ESXi host in a VMware vSphere cluster as a permanent recovery solution

Features & Benefits:

Backup

Capture everything—systems, applications, configuration settings, services, data—so you don’t risk losing irreplaceable data, custom applications, or your operating system.

• Execute a one-time full backup of a Windows or Linux hard drive that you can archive
• Back up Microsoft SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint servers and other critical application servers, including updates in memory
• Back up nearly any type of Linux server, such as web, mail, database, and file servers
• Encrypt backup jobs to securely protect data
• Save backups to any internal or removable drive or network storage device
• Quickly view the size, duration, and type of each performed backup and monitor any issues from the patented job timeline feature in the SPX user interface
• Manage how long you retain backup images when you need to save on storage space
• Back up a non-bootable system before attempting a restore operation using StorageCraft Recovery Environment

Scheduling

Run backups regularly, even while people work (they won’t even notice), and you’ll never risk losing more than a few minutes of data.

• Schedule full or incremental backups to occur automatically
• Get complete flexibility in scheduling your backup jobs—for example, run backups more often Monday through Thursday, run fewer on Friday, and just one over the weekend
• Create “mixed-mode” backup job schedules (a full backup followed by daily incremental backups until the next scheduled full backup)
• Create “continuous incremental” backup schedules (a full backup followed by perpetual daily incremental backups)
• Schedule incremental backups to run as often as every 15 minutes

Remote Management

Manage SPX-agent installation and backup-job scheduling on remote machines without leaving your desk.

• Use the same SPX user interface to connect to machines running SPX, regardless of whether they are Windows or Linux
• Install the SPX agent on a Windows server, desktop, laptop, or VM and create a backup-job schedule for that machine without having to visit it
• Install the SPX agent on a Linux server or VM and create a backup-job schedule for that machine without having to visit it
• Choose to receive email notification when backup jobs succeed or fail
• Monitor SPX backup jobs on multiple endpoints from a single dashboard (available when you download free StorageCraft ShadowControl software)
• Create backup-job policies and apply them to groups of endpoints instead of configuring each endpoint’s backup-job schedule separately (available when you download free StorageCraft ShadowControl software)

Testing

Run easy-to-execute tests on your backup images, and you’ll be sure your backups will work when a disaster strikes.

• Verify the integrity of backup images through the image-chain browser in order to ensure they’re in a known good state for fast and reliable recovery
• Mount backup images through the image-chain browser and look through files and folders (if successful, the backup image is healthy)
• Boot a backup image to a virtual machine with VirtualBoot to test whether a restored system would function properly

Recovery

Recover a file or a folder or restore a whole system fast, to the same or different hardware, and avoid downtime and its costs.

• Recover a file or folder by mounting a point-in-time backup image from the image-chain browser
• Restore an entire data volume from the image-chain browser
• Quickly restore access to a database server by mounting a point-in-time backup image
• Restore a system to the same physical or virtual environment (with the StorageCraft Recovery Environment)
• Restore a Windows system to a different physical or virtual environment by using StorageCraft Hardware Independent Restore technology
• Restore a Linux system to a different physical or virtual environment with boot repair
• Rapidly boot a backup image as a virtual machine (temporary system failover) with VirtualBoot
  • boot an SPX Windows or Linux backup on a supported Linux version
  • boot an SPX Windows backup on a supported Windows system
  • boot an SPX Windows backup as a guest VM on a Hyper-V host (Windows 2012 R2 and 2016 required)

Migration

Move a system to a new machine without losing uptime, and do so regardless of your hardware choice.

Licensing:

StorageCraft licenses SPX on a per-system basis. SPX licenses are available for:

• Windows physical servers and small-business servers
• Linux physical servers
• Windows VMs
• Linux VMs
• Windows desktops and laptops

A VM license is appropriately less expensive than a physical server license. Please note that a virtual license allows you to migrate or restore a VM to a physical environment. However, once restored to a physical system, the virtual license ends. Use a new physical license to continue to make backups in a physical environment.

Licensing options

StorageCraft provides the following licensing options:

1. Annual subscription licensing
   • Choose a 1-year or 2-year subscription. Maintenance is included for the duration of the subscription.
     • For physical machines, we offer subscriptions on a per-system basis.
     • For VMs, we offer subscriptions on a per-socket or per-system basis.
2. Per-socket perpetual licensing for VMs. Choose from:
   • Standard Socket Edition for organizations with more than 6 sockets in their environment
   • Essentials Socket Edition for organizations with 6 sockets or fewer in their environment
3. Per-system perpetual licensing for virtual and physical machines
   • You can buy a single license for a single system or buy bundles of licenses with volume discounting to protect several systems at once. The first year of maintenance is included.
4. Per-system MSP Subscription Licensing for virtual and physical machines.
   • MSPs providing protection for their clients can provide monthly subscriptions that auto-renew. The monthly fee includes MSP Portal access and maintenance.

Screenshots:

Technical Specifications :

Supported Microsoft Windows Operating Systems

Hypervisor support

• Citrix XenServer
• Linux KVM
• Microsoft Hyper-V
• Microsoft Virtual PC
• Microsoft Virtual Server
• Oracle VirtualBox
• ProxMox
• Qemu
• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV)
• Stratos everRun
• VMware ESX/ESXi (including the free version of ESXi)
• VMware Workstation

Socket licensing support

Socket licensing is available on:

• VMware ESXi 5 and 6 with vCenter
• Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2 and 2012 R2

NOTE: Socket licensing requires the installation of the StorageCraft Socket Licensing Service on a designated VM (Windows or Linux) in a given host environment. That VM requires Internet access.

System requirements

32- and 64-bit Installers

Storagecraft Driver License

SPX provides 32- and 64-bit Windows installers for Standard and GPO installs. (This is different from the Linux version which ships in a 64-bit version only.) Points to remember:

• SPX requires the correct bit-level installer for the OS. If the OS is 32-bit, use the 32-bit SPX installer. If the OS is 64-bit, use the 64-bit installer.
• The default installation path for 32-bit Windows is Program Files (x86)StorageCraftspx. The default for the 64-bit version is Program FilesStorageCraftspx.
• The standard installers work for manual and silent installs using scripts. The Windows GPO installers work when using a Group Policy to install SPX.
• The Windows GPO installer filenames end with 'GP' to distinguish them from the Standard installers. For example:

  ShadowProtect_SPX-en-US-6.0.8-19.win64_GP.msi
  ShadowProtect_SPX-en-US-6.0.8-19.win32_GP.msi

Installation

To install SPX on a Windows system:

1. Download and run the appropriate bit-level SPX Windows standard installer.
2. Follow the onscreen prompts to complete the install.
3. If this is a new (and not upgrade) install, request a Trial key when asked.
4. Copy the Trial key from the StorageCraft trial response page (or email) into the activation dialog.
5. Click Done.
6. Log into a Local Session using credentials for a user who is a member of the Windows Local Admin group. (A user who has Administrator privileges.)
7. Configure a destination and a backup job.

Recovery Environment

The 64-bit Recovery Environment CrossPlatform (RE-X) supports restorations of both Windows and Linux boot volumes. Use the REBuilder app to create the 64-bit Windows Recovery Environment if the restore requires additional driver support. (StorageCraft recommends using the 32-bit Recovery Environment only when required by the destination hardware.)

OS Upgrades

You need to deactivate the ShadowProtect SPX license and uninstall the software prior to upgrading an existing Windows system to a newer version. For example, do an uninstall of SPX when upgrading a Windows 7 system to Windows 8 or a Windows 8 to Windows 8 Pro or to Windows 10. After the OS upgrade, reinstall ShadowProtect and reactivate the license. While the system preserves backup job configurations and other ShadowProtect settings and could continue an existing back chain, a best practice is to always create a new backup job after the upgrade rather than continue the older, existing chain.

Documentation:

Download the StorageCraft ShadowProtect SPX Data Sheet (PDF).

Pricing Notes:

• Pricing and product availability subject to change without notice.
• First year of maintenance is included in the purchase price.
• Premium Support requires an active Maintenance Agreement.
• Virtualization bundles may be installed inside VMWare ESX / ESXi, Hyper-V, and Xen virtual machines.

Now that we know virtualization is awesome and can help businesses save money, you might be thinking of migrating your physical machine to a virtual one.

It might actually be a good time to consider it: Redmond Magazine reported last month that Microsoft was going to put out a third version of its Virtual Machine Converter later this year. One of the free tool’s new features will be support for physical to virtual conversions.

In case that’s you, Robert Burges, a virtualization and cloud computing expert, laid out his best two methods for your P2V migration: Microsoft Sysinternals Disk4vhd utility (free) and System Center Virtual Machine Manager. He described the differences between the two as the Disk2vhd only converting physical drives to virtual disks, but will not build a virtual machine or any configuration.

Storagecraft Volume Snapshot Driver

On the other hand, the SCVMM will do everything and you will perform the tasks to get there via a wizard. He goes into detail on his web page about how to do all of that.

Rick Vanover, writing for TechRepublic, offered up some other options for P2V. He recommended another free tool called VMware Converter Standalone. Vanover gives some tips on “avoiding the gotchas,” which include identifying anything associated with an interface or IP address; check out disk names; stop applications you don’t need; and test it before you do the full migration.

PluralSight wrote a blog about some of the efficient ways to use the VMware Converter, including how to do the migration on both hot and cold machines.

Vanover, this time writing for TechTarget, went over some licensing considerations.

During the migration, there is a chance the virtualization will result in “more instances of your operating system” than you began with. He recommends checking to see if the original operating system is retired and not being used by a physical system for something else.

To manage that better, he advises limiting the TCP/IP addresses that the virtual host can use.

“This doesn’t enforce duplicate licensing situations, however,” he wrote. “This is one area where the follow-through of your virtualization project is critically important to maintain your licensing compliance.”

Another good tool for migrating physical to virtual is StorageCraft’s Shadow Protect 5. It enables users to back up and recover any Windows server, desktop or laptop.

For migration, the Backup Wizard, Restore Wizard, Image Conversion Tool and StorageCraft Hardware Independent Restore technology let you:

• Migrate a backup image from one physical machine to another.
• Migrate a backup image from one virtual environment to another.
• Migrate a backup image of a physical machine to a virtual environment.
• Migrate a backup image of a virtual environment to a physical machine.

Storagecraft Driver Updater

For those looking for another efficient method, Vision Solutions claims that its process can be done in real time with zero down time, which is probably good given that most businesses can’t afford to have production equipment be down for long.

If you do decide this is the right thing for you, there are lots of planning tools that you can use to make sure business isn’t interrupted too badly. You can download a conversion info sheet from the VMAdmin website. Microsoft also makes one.

Good luck!

Storagecraft Volume Snapshot Driver

Photo credit: TomvdW via Deviant Art