I want to disable shadow copies being created on a specific Windows NFS share folder which is being used by an ESXi 6 server for virtual machine backups (via xsibackup). The reason for wanting to do this is because the VM backups are being handled by xsibackup with full and incremental backups being done daily via xsibackup and xsibackup-rsync. The shadow copies generated for this NFS share are using a lot of space on my disk array and are not really required in this case.
I would like to be able to disable the NFS share from being shadow copied while keeping the main shadow copy process unaffected for the rest of the volume the NFS share is on. I'd also like to be able to delete the shadow copies already created for the NFS share folder to reclaim the disk space.
I'm aware of this KB, but it doesn't appear to be working. I tried creating a new multi string REG_MULTI_SZ in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToSnapshot called it "ESXi NFS Share" and set the value to E:\NFS FOLDER NAME\*.* /s
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa819132%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
What is the best approach to provide exclusion rules for shadow copies and delete already created copies if possible?
I might be taken your question out of context here since I haven't done you described. My understanding is that you're trying to disable VSS on specific NFS share while it backup certain one that are selected. It shows that 2008 doesn't allow that type of config, it only allows per volume basis. Maybe you might want to consider mounting it on a different volume instead?
Best Practices for Shadow Copies of Shared Folders
You can only enable Shadow Copies of Shared Folders on a per-volume basis—that is, you cannot select specific shared folders and files on a volume to be copied or not copied.
Enable and Configure Shadow Copies of Shared Folders