Introduction

IBM Lotus Domino Server does not support VSS so we recommend using start/stop scripts to have consistent backups of its databases. 

Solution

To properly back up a Domino server, use a pre-data-capture script which dumps the Domino data to disk so that it appears in consistent state within the volume snapshot:

1. Create two .bat files on the machine with Domino server, with the following contents:

Pre-data capture:

"C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Domino\nserver.exe" -c "drop all"
timeout /t 5 /nobreak

Post data capture:

"C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Domino\nserver.exe" -c "dbcache flush"
timeout /t 5 /nobreak
 

2. In backup options, go to Pre-post data capture commands (learn more here), enable command execution for pre and post data capture and specify the created batch files in the Command fields. Configure other backup plan parameters as needed.

More information

We recommend to contact Domino Server vendor to learn more about proper quiescing of the database before the backup. Specific configurations of the server may require using different commands/scripts.