Charlie Russel's Blog

Windows Server 2008 R2 added some useful enhancements to the PowerShell snapin that was in Windows Server 2008. But it’s still a pain to use, and a bit hard to get your head around. Here’s a basic PowerShell script to do a backup. There are enough comments in there that it should help you get started.

# —————————————————————–
# Script to set a Windows Server Backup policy for a server
#
# Assumes: Volumes C: and D: to backup.
#        : Target – \storageserverserverbackup
#        : Exclusions – D:temp, D:Users*.MP3, D:Users*.WMA
#        : VSS Mode – Full Backup
#        : System State – True
#        : Bare Metal Recovery – True
#        : Schedule – 12:30 PM, 11:00 PM
# Requires: Elevated PowerShell
#         :   (Must be run As Administrator)
#
# Planned Improvements: [minor] Check for elevated priv, error politely if not
#                     : [minor] Check for Server Backup PSSnapin before trying to load
#                     : [major] Accept cmdline parameters
#
# ModHist: 1/31/11 – initial (Charlie Russel)
#        :
#
# With profound thanks to Richard Siddaway, Windows PowerShell MVP
# —————————————————————–
# By default, the PSSnapin isn”t loaded automatically, so first load it.
Add-PSSnapin Windows.ServerBackup # will error if already loaded, but continue

# First, create a new empty policy
# Alternately, you can open the existing policy in Edit mode with
#   $BackupPolicy = Get-WBPolicy -edit
$BackupPolicy = New-WBPolicy

# Now,define the parts of it.
# First,let”s do the “source” volumes that will be part of the backup.
# This requires us to first get a list of them, and then parse that list
# to add the ones we want (C: and D:)
# We don”t actually need C:, since we”ll get that as part of Bare Metal Restore,
# but we include it anyway for completeness

$volC = Get-WBVolume -AllVolumes | Where {$_.MountPath -eq “C:”}
$volD = Get-WBVolume -AllVolumes | Where {$_.MountPath -eq “D:”}
$Volumes = $volC,$volD

# Now, add those volumes to the blank policy.
Add-WBVolume -policy $BackupPolicy -volume $Volumes

# If you want to do the entire volume, you don”t need to define any exclusions,
# but if you want to exclude any files or folders, you need to define that exclusion
# and add that to the backup policy you”re building. First, define it. 
$excTEMP = New-WBFileSpec -Filespec D:Temp -exclude
$excWMA = New-WBFileSpec -Filespec “D:Users*.wma” -exclude  # Recursive unless
$excMP3 = New-WBFileSpec -Filespec “D:Users*.mp3” -exclude  # -NonRecursive specified
$FileExclusions = $excTEMP,$excWMA,$excMP3

# and then add that to the policy we”re building
Add-WBFileSpec -policy $BackupPolicy -filespec $FileExclusions

# Define the backup target, this time as a network share.
# For backup to share, you need to create a credential to connect to the remote share.
# This wouldn”t be required for specifying a removable disk.
# You can specify the username here (DOMAINUser) but will be prompted for password
$Cred = Get-Credential exampleuser

# Now, define the target
$Target = New-WBBackupTarget -NetworkPath \StorageServerServerBackup -Credential $Cred

# Add the target to the policy
Add-WBBackupTarget -policy $BackupPolicy -target $Target

# Define the schedule
$sch1 = [datetime]”01/31/2011 12:30:00″
$sch2 = [datetime]”01/31/2011 21:00:00″
Set-WBSchedule -policy $BackupPolicy -schedule $sch1,$sch2

# Set for system state and for bare metal recovery
Add-WBSystemState -policy $BackupPolicy
Add-WBBareMetalRecovery -policy $BackupPolicy

# Finally, set for full VSS Backup
Set-WBVssBackupOptions -policy $BackupPolicy -VssFullBackup

# Finally, we need to SET the policy before it actually takes control
Set-WBPolicy -force -policy $BackupPolicy

# This completes the configuration of the SBS server backup policy
$Server = (hostname).tolower()
” The server $Server now has the following backup configuration: “
“”
Get-WBPolicy