NSs Snapshots

NSs snapshots are snapshots that have NSs-* prepended to the snapshot name. These snapshots are commonly created in the following scenarios:

Volume-level restore activity
Volume size changes
Microsoft VSS related snapshot operations

In the case of Microsoft VSS operations, NSs snapshots are normally set to offline; however, the snapshots might appear online while an operation is in progress.

In rare cases, and more commonly in legacy code, if an unexpected failure occurs that prevents NSs snapshots from being appropriately managed, you might see an NSs snapshot left online even though there are no running back end processes that leverage the snapshot.

NSs snapshots are usually renamed upon successful operation to meet the normal snapshot-naming scheme; however, if a third-party backup requester calls our provider, this could cause the snapshot to retain the NSs-* name.

NOTE: NSs snapshots are created as a recovery point right before you perform certain tasks. You can delete these snapshots after you have verified that your task completed successfully, as these snapshots are not managed by the snapshot retention schedule on a volume collection or by the Time-To-Live feature.