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We have a file share we want to roll out at work, and someone asked if there is a way OS X clients can see VSS copies on the network share they mount (to restate: a SMB/CIFS share on a server on the network, not a local HFS+ drive) to restore older copies of the file. Quick searches on Google seem to indicate not many people have interest in this or business requirement, or understand the question (assuming the question to be if Apple has an equivalent technology; I am not interested in that question). Does anyone know? I am at the office right now and do not have access to a Mac Book. I would only be interested in newish OS X releases, so 10.5.x to 10.6.x.

UPDATE: Since this is really vendor specific (in terms of the SMB/CIFS appliance/server), I'll accept the answer specific to NetApp since this is the most common scenario according to how Google stacks up with this answer.

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2 Answers 2

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Best way I've found so far is that you can browse the snapshots from Finder:

  1. Open finder & navigate to the share
  2. Click Go, Go to Folder, & type .zfs
  3. Click into "snapshots"
  4. From there you can drag & drop the files back to the share.

The problem with this is a lot of times Finder will kick you out of the .zfs folder back into the top level directory of the share. I'm not sure how to get around this. I'd also like to see a better way.

edit

Just realized you can set the zfs snapdir to visible & Finder won't kick you out:

zfs set snapdir=visible your/zfs/file/system

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  • This presumes a ZFS share, no? I know a lot of commercial systems do/probably use this as underlying tech, but I am not sure if we do (other sysadmins running the "enterprise storage" group). That being said I think we use NetApp. Still, I enabled "hidden files" (dot files) in Finder and did not see said folder. I suspect it is because I am not an admin on the share or it has been explicitly disabled. Oh well.
    – songei2f
    Sep 16, 2011 at 15:53
  • If it's NetApp, there should be a hidden directory called .snapshot and you should be able to tell Finder to go into that folder at the root level of the share, whether you can see it or not.
    – churnd
    Sep 22, 2011 at 10:58
  • I tried, but it did not work for me. Again, do you need admin privs on the share to do that? I assume not, but I think my assumption must be wrong. I'll have to ask the storage guys if it is in fact a NetApp. Thanks.
    – songei2f
    Sep 23, 2011 at 8:01
  • @churnd are you aware of a way to set snapdir=visible via the Web UI for an SMB share rather than using the CLI? I'm new to FreeNAS and the docs seems to mention not to use the CLI to modify system settings so I'm looking for a GUI method.
    – ptk
    Jan 22, 2021 at 5:22
  • Confirming this still works on TrueNAS SCALE 22. The dataset's Snapshot Directory set to visible and Enable Shadow Copies enabled in the SMB share. Thank you!
    – Adam
    Jul 11, 2022 at 4:12
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On a Mac you may access the VSS snapshots this way. This seems to work everywhere I've tried it. 

smb://DOMAIN;[email protected]/SHARENAME/DIRECTORYNAME/~snapshot/

So, simply append /~snapshot/ to the end of the share mount path. This also works in the mount command. 

mount -t smbfs -o nobrowse //USER@SERVER/SHARE/DIR/~snapshot /PATH/TO/MOUNT/POINT

The -o nobrowse prevents it from showing in Finder (GUI). You can also -r for read only. This should also work on Linux.

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