SmarterMail is not VSS-aware, so I am concerned about getting a good consistent snapshot of the SM data array. Software like MySQL, SimpleDNS and a few other systems we use have a way to tell the server or application "Hey, backup is about to start... do what you need to do to commit whatever to disk". For example, MySQL, we can lock tables/flush tables etc. to make sure that any VSS snapshots contain a fully consistent state of the server, once the VSS snapshot has finished, we have MySQL release table locks etc. so it can resume full normal operations.
SmarterMail has a ton of moving parts, files are changing, updating, writing to, created etc. so in the event there is a full catastrophic failure, the odds of our VSS-based backups being in a consistent state is probably 0. We could shutdown the service, start the backup, wait for the snapshot to complete, then restart the service, but stopping and starting a mailserver nightly isnt great.
Exchange of course is VSS-aware, Zimbra offers a backup/restore system that creates safe backups, wondering what the ST developers think about getting SmarterMail to allow us to create safe and consistent backups, especially since we are venturing into Exchange territory with EWS, EAS, MAPI.