Linux equivalent for Windows shadow copies

I've got a similar situation (more data less uses - around 60) and the benefits of having shadow copies available to undo mistakes is invaluable. That being said your question was about performance.

Microsoft doesn't say much about it because it's quite subjective. With mostly reads you probably wont notice anything. NTFS uses copy on write to achieve snapshots. (akin to zfs if you've heard their marketing) Which means for each write to an existing file it has to write a new block and make a note about the old block being old. I've got most of my servers on a raid 5 or 6 setup so I don't notice the extra writes. On a single spindle you might.

I also use the snapshots for backup purposes, I don't need to worry about open files etc. A lot of different backup utilities (ghost, true image, and possibly Microsoft backup) leverage this.

There are so many other variables to network share performance (network, cpu, application) snapshots weren't noticed by any of our staff. Until they did did something stupid with a file that is.

It is possible to turn snapshotting on and then turn it off again later if there's a problem. So it's worth a try.

You can use the Get-WMIObject cmdlet to remotely remove shadow copies. The example below demonstrates how it might work. It should be noted that the Get-WMIObject cmdlet returned a null object in the case where there were not any remote shadow copies available. This means that might still need a combination of PowerShell remoting and the vssadmin tool to remotely create shadow copies.

On the target server (from an elevated command prompt), let's first create a shadow copy so that one is available:

vssadmin create shadow /for=c:

From the management server:

$shadowCopies = Get-WMIObject -Class Win32_ShadowCopy -Computer <TARGET SERVER NAME>
$shadowCopies | % {$_.DeviceObject}  # Lists out just the names of the copies
$shadowCopies | Get-Member -View All # Lists all members even hidden ones such as "delete"
$shadowCopies[0].Delete()            # Deletes the first shadow copy when more than one exists
$shadowCopies.Delete()               # Works when only a single shadow copy exists