MySQL Bugs: #35668: add support for microsoft volume shadow copy services as windows backup method

Bug #35668	add support for microsoft volume shadow copy services as windows backup method
Submitted:	29 Mar 2008 11:03	Modified:	30 Mar 2008 19:36
Reporter:	Shane Bester (Platinum Quality Contributor)	Email Updates:
Status:	Verified	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: Windows	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:	5.7	OS:	Windows
Assigned to:	Assigned Account	CPU Architecture:	Any
Tags:	volume shadow copy services, vss

Description:
this is a request to make mysql server vss-aware on windows.

add support for microsoft's volume shadow copy services as backup method on windows platforms.

How to repeat:
some info about vss:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/2b0d2457-b7d8-42c3-b6c9-59c145b7765...
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384649(VS.85).aspx

Suggested fix:
http://forge.mysql.com/worklog/task.php?id=2881

Thank you for a reasonable feature request.

Ideally an application takes a "stop all writes" instruction (i.e. "VSS Aware"), but pending that (i.e. this bug), there are some other things that can be done. If anyone is interested, add a note and I will provide some instructions.

http://karlssonondatabases.blogspot.se/2013/11/mariadb-database-disk-snapshot-backups.html

This is a verified bug from 7 years ago, not marked as fixed. Can I infer that MySQL version 5 still will not flush its buffers to disk when a backup program requests a Volume Shadow Copy? This could produce old or inconsistent backup files for MySQL on a Windows computer without a manual flush by the user or computer operator. Seems pretty serious to me.

it's now more than 10 years since the opening of this bug, perhaps we could see some progress?

I am using "flush tables with read lock;" before a volume snapshot (either Windows VSS or Linux LVM) and "unlock tables;" after to have a consistent backup where I can use filecopy/mysqldump/whatever-tools-suits. 

I wonder there is a need for more than that? 
(P.S.: I'm backing up MySQL databases for more than 10 years with this)

Marcus, I do that too. But it would be nice if the MySQL maintainers would update MySQL to coexist with Windows.

But wouldn't that mean any other snapshot integration (LVM or any filesystem supporting it) on any platform (well, the most usual platforms) should also be supported? In my opinion too much overhead while a platform independent solution already exists for ages?

Shane, Such a discussion is off-topic for a bug reporting system. I will observe, though, that only the most popular OSs tend to impose such difficult requirements on their applications. That has benefits and drawbacks and it's part of life.