HorseChandelier

We used to use virtual box on windows with an immutable hard disk to boot the environment with storage, for persistence, elsewhere (usb for example) if required. Just used standard ubuntu for the guest distro.

Once you shut down the VM the vhd reverts to as installed. It’s a bit painful distributing the system but can be done.

You can prevent ordinary users messing with the immutable setting as well if that is a concern.

Wine Is Not an Emulator…

Is VSS even a backup?

Nope, not even close.

I thought it just copies old revisions of files into that shadow area

It just copies the deltas…

Backups can use vss to get a static image of the volume (deltas are written to the shadow area, which isn’t backed up, whilst the backup is running) it’s a little different for vhdx files on VMs but basically the same.

It’s magic… And often means that I don’t have to restore lost files from backup, just view the old versions and grab a copy from there.

With enough coffee he will soon become a banana…