Skip to content

Use COM for creating VSS and not WMI #1

@CornFly2016

Description

@CornFly2016

VSS can be created both using WMI and using COM in windows environment.

However, when using COM, we can get many benefits that we simply don't get when using WMI:

  1. Run as a 'Backup Operator' Privileges (And not requiring administrator). This is better for the least-privileges principle, and makes far more sense for a backup utility security context.
  2. Control whenever we want VSS writers to run (Sadly, WMI does not expose this functionality). This is an important aspect that allows supported context such as Registry writers, or Hyper-V writers, to make sure the backup that is created is done in a consistent state.

Microsoft have a great sample on how to use the COM interface in C++ here:
https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-classic-samples/blob/main/Samples/VShadowVolumeShadowCopy/README.md

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions