Backup/Restore a local Windows Internal Database

I’ve got Direct Access servers where I want to backup the local Windows Internet Database.

The built-in VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Services) has 3 components:

Let’s see if there’s a writer for the Windows Internal Database component (WID)

vssadmin list writers | 
Select-String -Pattern "Writer\sname:\s" -Context 0,3 |
ForEach-Object {
    [pscustomobject]@{
        Id = (($_.Context.PostContext -split "\r\n")[0] -split ':')[1].Trim()
        Name = ($_.Line -split ':\s',2)[1] -replace "'",''
    }
} | Select Name,Id | ft -AutoSize

Fortunately, there’s a WIDWriter in the above list 😀

It also means that the built-in tools are able perform a live backup. But, I first need to add the Windows Backup feature:

Add-WindowsFeature Windows-Server-Backup  -Restart:$false

Now, I’m ready to backup and restore the internal database files.
The backup operation will create a WindowsImageBackup directory on the target partition (P: in my case).
The recovery operation will extract files from the VHD previously created. It will not restore files in their original location under C:\Windows\…
but will rather move them to another folder (P:\BackupDB) and preserve the original folders tree.

	# Backup Direct Access Database using Volume Shadow and Windows built-in backup tools
	'WID\Data','WID\Log','DirectAccess\db' | ForEach-Object {
	if (-not(Test-Path -Path $_ -PathType Container)) {
	mkdir "P:\BackupDB\$($_)"
	}
	}
	try {
	$pol = New-WBPolicy -ErrorAction Stop
	Add-WBBackupTarget -Policy $pol -Target (New-WBBackupTarget -VolumePath P:) -ErrorAction Stop
	Add-WBFileSpec -Policy $pol -FileSpec (New-WBFileSpec -FileSpec C:\windows\WID\* ) -ErrorAction Stop
	Add-WBFileSpec -Policy $pol -FileSpec (New-WBFileSpec -FileSpec C:\Windows\DirectAccess\* ) -ErrorAction Stop
	Set-WBSchedule -Policy $pol -Schedule ([datetime]::Now.AddMinutes(10)) -ErrorAction Stop
	Start-WBBackup -Policy $pol -ErrorAction Stop
	} catch {
	Write-Warning -Message "Failed to backup because $($_.Exception.Message)"
	}
	$Backups = Get-WBBackupSet -BackupTarget (New-WBBackupTarget -VolumePath P:)
	$Backup = $Backups | Select -Last 1
	if ((Get-WBJob -Previous 1).HResult -eq 0) {
	'WID\Data','WID\Log','DirectAccess\db','DirectAccess' | ForEach-Object {
	$FilesPath = Join-Path -Path (
	Get-WBBackupVolumeBrowsePath -BackupSet $Backup -VolumeInBackup $Backup.Volume[0]
	) -ChildPath "Windows\$($_)\*"
	$Loc = $_
	Get-ChildItem -Path $FilesPath | ForEach-Object {
	Start-WBFileRecovery -BackupSet $Backup -SourcePath "$($_.FullName)" -TargetPath "P:\BackupDB\$($Loc)" -Force -Recursive -Option OverwriteIfExists -Verbose
	}
	}
	}

view raw WIDbackup-restore.ps1 hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Quick ‘n dirty solution but it allowed me to extract the database files in a consistent way using only the built-in tools and the capabilities of the Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS).