This post is focused on wbadmin and not Powershell. Wbadmin is a tool that has been around for many versions of Windows back to at least 2008. It’s the primary tool used for most Windows machines. This article provides some great starting points to do most tasks from a Powershell prompt.
As a network administrator, I have installed a recently used backup disk into my server, the disk is offline and is being used as a backup drive in a virtual machine. I want to see what backups area available on this disk installed:
I run wbadmin get versions, it doesn’t show which versions are available or online for this disk, but it does show versions in my catalog and some may be available on this disk.
Backup time: 8/11/2018 8:30 PM
Backup target: Fixed Disk labeled D:
Version identifier: 08/12/2018-03:30
Can recover: Volume(s), File(s), Application(s), Bare Metal Recovery, System State
Snapshot ID: {6bb6b7d8-7394-4f6d-80fb-2fdf9336f732}
Backup time: 8/12/2018 8:30 PM
Backup target: Fixed Disk labeled D:
Version identifier: 08/13/2018-03:30
Can recover: Volume(s), File(s), Application(s), Bare Metal Recovery, System State
Snapshot ID: {5958a97f-5e1d-4af9-b994-f5871a457c99}
Backup time: 8/13/2018 8:30 PM
Backup target: Fixed Disk labeled D:
Version identifier: 08/14/2018-03:30
Can recover: Volume(s), File(s), Application(s), Bare Metal Recovery, System State
Snapshot ID: {bb27239c-3ea9-44c7-ad3d-20263503da8d}
This drive was installed during all three of these backups, so I can choose any of these versions to query information.
wbadmin get items -version:08/14/2018-03:30
Another helpful thing to note, when you type wbadmin get and it will display the available commands and options.