Volume Shadow Copy Age

The Volume Shadow Copy Age check watches the shadow copies (VSS snapshots) on a Windows device. For every volume that has shadow copies it takes the newest one, works out how old it is and alerts once that age reaches or exceeds your thresholds — so you notice when snapshot creation has quietly stopped, for example because a backup job or a scheduled task no longer runs. The check runs on the device through the octoja agent and reads the snapshot list locally — nothing is installed and no credentials are needed. It runs every 60 minutes; the interval belongs to the check itself and cannot be changed per device. The Check Library shows this as Every 60 min in the Interval column.

Steps

1. Go to Devices and open the Windows device.
2. Click the Checks tab → Add Check → Volume Shadow Copy Age.
3. Adjust the thresholds if needed.
4. Click Add Check.

Settings

Both thresholds compare against the age of the newest shadow copy per volume.

• The defaults — warning at 26 hours, critical at 50 hours — fit a daily snapshot schedule: one missed run raises the warning, a second missed run makes it critical.
• If Warning age (hours) is set higher than Error age (hours), the check swaps the two values so the smaller age always warns first.

Results

Each volume with at least one shadow copy gets its own result; the check result is the worst of those volumes. Age is rounded to one decimal hour before comparison.

Volumes without shadow copies do not appear in the results. The check can therefore report OK even when an expected volume has no shadow copy. Warn when no shadow copies are found applies only when none are found anywhere on the device. After setup and storage changes, check that every expected volume is listed and verify the job responsible for creating its shadow copies.

The result shows one card per volume:

• The volume name with an OK, Warning or Critical badge.
• Newest — the age of the newest shadow copy, shown in hours (4.2h) and, from 48 hours, in days (2.1d).
• The number of snapshots on the volume. It is informational: only the newest shadow copy per volume is compared against the thresholds.

When the check can't run

These outcomes raise a warning by default instead of a volume status. For No shadow copies found, you can turn off the warning with the Warn when no shadow copies are found option.

Platform support

Shadow copies are a Windows feature, so octoja publishes this check for Windows only. The Check Library lists it with a Windows badge in the Platforms column, and when you add a check on a device the picker opens filtered to that device's operating system — so the check is not offered on a Linux or macOS device. If it reaches one anyway, through a config package whose rule matches non-Windows devices for example, the check reports the warning Only runs on Windows.

Related articles

• Assign checks with config packages