8.16.3
Replication Bandwidth Management UI for the Google Cloud Storage replication mode
Resolved restore issue with Hyper-V backups when VMRS files were disabled (introduced in version 8.16.1)
Corrected bootloader choice for Windows client operating systems. Previously, an EFI bootloader might have been chosen for an MBR machine.
Use hard rather than soft reset for the second boot verification attempt to work around some early Windows boot issues
“Replicate only last successful job of the day” option might skip replicating certain jobs
Increased replication network resilience to reduce the number of the ‘Failed’ jobs caused by temporary connectivity issues during replication
A new full backup was pushed if replication took longer than the retention period for the baseline backup job
8.16.2
Email reports for the Google Cloud Storage replication mode
Hybrid Cloud replication would stop uploading previous backups if there were intermittent connectivity issues
Occasional Error on getting browse URL error when trying to access the appliance from the Dashboard
The list of bootable restore points was empty if the appliance was unable to pull the list of jobs from the Hybrid Cloud
The Replication Reconcile button was not visible if the Hybrid Cloud replication pusher service was stopped
8.16.1
TLS 1.3 support for replication to and from Google Cloud Storage
ISO EFI support for the ColdBMR recovery tool
Option to enable or disable offsite GCS replication with the ability to replicate only the last successful backup job of the day
The backup agent skips VMRS and BIN files during Hyper-V backups by default
Implemented compression for AVHD, AVHDX, VMRS, and BIN files during Hyper-V backup replication to the public cloud
The “Replicate only last successful job of the day” option could cause replication of more than one backup job per day
Failure in one of multiple DR Image jobs that were scheduled to start simultaneously
Failure in the Browse and Restore function for Hyper-V jobs when a disk with an uppercase extension was present in the backup
Attempt to configure boot settings for a VM resulted in a NullPointerException error after updating from version 8.14.1 or earlier to version 8.16.0
Downloading a Hyper-V restore point from Hybrid Cloud was failing if the protected Hyper-V VM had a disk name containing a space
Progress of the Request Missing Blocks operation was reset if replication was interrupted due to a network connection issue
White-labeled version of the appliance UI
Automatic startup of VMs if they were running before the appliance reboot
8.16.0
Ability to download failback snapshots from Hybrid Cloud to the appliance
Support for resumable file uploads during replication sessions for Hyper-V and other jobs with large files
Disabled direct booting for Hyper-V jobs in Hybrid Cloud
The Boot › Overview subtab listed all clients that had ever existed on the appliance
Verification of multiple inconsistent jobs incorrectly marked all listed jobs, except for the first one, as successful
8.15.5
Unnecessary notification that DDFS repair was required whenever DDFS tried to access data with missing blocks
Occasional notifications in the Dashboard that a VM was running when it was not
8.15.4
Backup message log was missing detailed information about the Hyper-V errors
Ignyte DR backups via SMB and all Hyper-V backups always ran as full
Backup failure if image size was not aligned to 4 KB
8.15.3
The appliance saves DDFS repair history now
Running DDFS repair while having files in the shredder might cause data corruption
The job repair tool did not remove the failed verification status
8.15.2
Occasional boot verification failure because of the VirtIO driver injection issues
DR image backup failed with the error “System.ArgumentException: length cannot be negative” on dynamic disks with dynamic volumes
8.15.1
The appliance booted into the NoRAID mode after updating to Backup & Disaster Recovery 8.15.0
8.15.0
Boot verification jobs are now shown on the Active subtab (Management Console › Boot › Active)
A notification is shown in the Dashboard if the appliance unclean shutdown was detected
Added and configured as default a new transport protocol (NBD) instead of SMB
You can interrupt the DDFS repair process if you need to boot the appliance immediately
DDFS repair now checks the size of the BAM file and fixes it if needed
Backup agent now requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.2
Incorrectly formatted output of the SNMP sensor about the RAID status
Occasional failure of the appliance UI with the out-of-memory exception due to the duplicate VMware connections (records)
8.14.1
Turned off the automatic DDFS repair for appliances with booted VMs or a special configuration setting
8.14.0
Automatic DDFS repair on boot for appliances with total RAID capacity of 6 TB or less after unclean shutdown that detects backup jobs with missing data blocks and sets their status to Failed Verification
A new log file with Windows update activity and information is generated and can be downloaded for Windows clients to speed up and simplify troubleshooting
Option to check backup jobs for consistency
Switched the appliance base operating system from CentOS to CentOS Stream
Domain names for the back-end services (that is, updating, licensing, billing, support tunnel, and so on) are now consolidated as *-svc.infrascale.com
If you skipped the appliance Quick Start Wizard, the system showed the error message “Lost connection to DB”
The Export Virtual option in the appliance Management Console › Settings › Network Adapters was turned off by default for the newly set appliances in firmware version 8.13.6
DR image and Hyper-V backup jobs were occasionally marked as failed because of the issues with cleanup at the final stage
Internal service for the appliance Management Console UI crashed with the out-of-memory error a few times in a row. This resulted in a memory dump file being created each time the system tried to restart the service automatically. At the same time, the appliance ran the self-backup job – Myself – including all those memory dump files that led to gradual steady reduction of the RAID space.
Support of 32-bit DR backup agent
8.13.6
Option to skip installation of Windows updates when booting a VM on the appliance and during its boot verification
Implemented the retry logic for boot verification to resolve the issue when a VM booted in the Windows recovery mode due to pending Windows updates
Improved security by making the Premise-Request service restrict unauthorized access to critical configuration files and block downloading of any internal assets
Browse and restore operation failed with the error “Invalid main GPT header” if the main GPT header of the protected machine was invalid, but the backup itself was recoverable
Backup jobs that did not pass the bootability check were not reported and properly marked in the Dashboard
Backup jobs of machines with more than one operating system installed did not have the respective warning displayed for them in the appliance Management Console
In 8.13.5 release, the standard DR engine could not detect the .NET Framework sometimes and therefore DR image backups were failing
Option to reset temporary backup storage on the client that did not work with the standard DR engine
Option to run code remotely on the appliance and clients from the appliance Management Console
EULA acceptance step from the appliance Quick Start Wizard, DR backup agent installation wizard, and the VMware virtual appliance deployment flow
Terms of Service acceptance step before the appliance firmware update
8.13.5
Bare-metal restore now supports restore from the file system
An option to restore a backed up VM to VMware without a network adapter or a virtual distributed switch (for cases when those are not supported by the target VMware host)
VMs booted for verification now have screen saver turned off to avoid situations when the boot verification status was successful, but the screenshot was completely black (because of the screen saver) and did not reflect the status
Improved the boot verification algorithm to make it more reliable and stable for all supported operating systems
Deprecated the white-labeled version of the appliance
The Speed/Duplex Setting, Current Speed, and Current Duplex columns from the appliance Management Console › Settings › Network Status
Option to select speed and duplex in the appliance Management Console › Settings › Network Adapters
8.13.4
Users can now select which job warnings to show and ignore on the appliance per backup client
The History subtab could occasionally show an incorrect number of jobs
The appliance did not shut down the VM after its boot verification and did not send the respective monitoring events to the Dashboard
Wiping and auto-provisioning operations on the appliance made the connected USB flash drive a part of the SSD catalogs
Starting from the firmware version 8.0, the browse and restore feature stopped supporting NTFS sparse files in the protected system
The appliance did not send monitoring events to the Dashboard until it was rebooted
8.13.3
User interface for the DDFS repair status is now available via the HTTPS protocol
User interface for the DDFS repair status is now available if the user gets access to the appliance Management Console using the remote access proxy from the Dashboard
The Cloud Replication Status column that shows the status of uploading the jobs to Google Cloud Storage
After updating to firmware 8.13.0 or later, the registered appliance lost its registration information
The replication service status on the secondary appliance broke if the paired primary appliance was offline or the replication service was not running
The Filters button did not work on the Replicated Jobs subtab
8.13.2
The status of the jobs replicated to Google Cloud Storage when in the corresponding replication mode is now shown on the Replication › Status subtab in the appliance Management Console
The jobs replicated to Google Cloud Storage when in the corresponding replication mode are now shown on the Replicated Jobs subtab in the appliance Management Console
User interface for the DDFS repair status
Starting from the firmware version 8.11, the appliance system was using the RAID excessively
The appliance system logs were occasionally filled with the error messages “extract data from STATUS not handled”
The appliance system logs were occasionally filled with the error messages “Failed to check battery”
The Reconcile Secondary button on the Replication › Status subtab was not shown
Support of the legacy 3Ware RAID controller
8.13.1
Google Cloud Storage replication mode. (This is a beta feature, and it is not available in full yet.)
Option to pull the jobs back to the appliance from Google Cloud Storage. (This is a beta feature, and it is not available in full yet.)
Duplicate DR engine processes could start on one client that prevented the DR backup from completion
8.13.0
Right after a DR image backup is finished the system inspects the image and checks its integrity and browsability before the backup job is considered complete
The Cloud tab in the appliance Management Console for managing backup jobs stored in Google Cloud Storage
Appliance failed to show the correct current state of its RAID
8.12.0
This release brings a few user experience and interface updates, as well as lots of improvements under the hood.
At the same time, with this release, we deprecated and removed the archiving functionality. Do not update if you still want to use this feature.
Support of VMware vSphere 8.0
Option to request and upload the replicated data blocks missing on the appliance
The NoDB mode for the appliance Management Console that shows the web interface to the users when the database cannot be initiated or is disconnected
Appliances running firmware v8.6 or earlier can now update to the most recent firmware version only after installing the transitional firmware v8.11
When updating the backup agent from the appliance Management Console, the system showed a false warning about the possible restart of the appliance
Lengthy resetting of the replication connection when replication was idle
The appliance needed to restart a few times after the initial configuration via the Quick Start
An excessive QEMU logging caused extra CPU load on the appliances running boot
journalctl logs were not preserved upon restarting the appliance
/flash and /boot directories were not mounted in the DDFS repair mode
The system failed to find and delete some unreferenced data from the appliance (error message: “Invalid Request null”)
Failure to download all logs from the Support tab of the appliance Management Console (error “java.nio.file.FileAlreadyExistsException”)
The appliance failed to restart automatically upon completing DDFS repair that was initiated from the appliance boot menu
When the Export Virtual option in the NIC bonding was selected, settings (MTU and Client ID) did not save properly
The jobs that were running during an unexpected restart or shutdown of the appliance remained in the system database and took the disk space. They were not visible in and could not be cleaned from the appliance Management Console (Settings › Unreferenced Data).
After wiping the appliance, a support tunnel could not be started from the appliance Management Console
System database could become corrupt and some system services could not start after the appliance reboot
Replication hanged in the WORKING state while the queue of the unprocessed jobs was increasing
Appliance Management Console stopped responding if an open job-related tab (for example, Scheduled Jobs, Recent Jobs, or other) contained an enormous number of data records to show
Shredder statistics showed some progress or negative values even when shredder was idle
Appliance failed to operate properly when polling the connected hosts of a Hyper-V cluster and detecting the same VM existed simultaneously on two Hyper-V hosts under the same ID
VMware VM backup jobs failed because the appliance lost connection with the vCenter instance or the host, but the system showed only the “java.lang.NullPointerException” error with no further explanation
Archiving functionality
Support of Microsoft Active Directory
8.11.1
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.11.0 and restarting it, DDFS could fail to mount with the error “Block Dedup Setup Failed”
If the appliance system could not mount DDFS for whatever reason, this also blocked the Management Console UI from loading for quite some time
8.11.0
Support for Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022
DDFS Repair item (to verify and repair DDFS) to the appliance boot menu
Increased the speed of the backup data replication by optimizing the metadata compression
Improved performance of the DDFS repair tool by optimizing the chain of commands
Updated wording for automatic update of the Windows backup agents (appliance Management Console › Settings › Firmware Update)
Self-backup of the appliance system and configuration (Myself backup) completed with warnings
DR image backup job did not boot on the appliance, and also Browse and Restore for the job did not work (error “Can’t have a partition outside the disk!”)
If a VM failed to boot on the appliance (error “com.eversync.libvirt.LibvirtManager.getVmsFromConfigDir”), the configuration file of the VM became corrupt (zero size, broken content, or else) that led to the Boot › Active tab not showing the VM and the Boot Wizard could not be started
Incorrect default limit of the simultaneously booted VMs (1 instead of 9) for the secondary (cloud) 1880 appliance
Appliance did not respect the email server settings (address and port) when sending a support request
The appliance failed to send the BackupStarted and BackupInProgress monitoring events and thus the system did not show any values in the Latest Restore Point Primary and Latest Restore Point Cloud columns in Disaster Recovery › Backup Status in the Dashboard
A job for the same VMware VM started even if another one was already running (backup jobs were running simultaneously)
After the access credentials to a vCenter instance connected to the appliance changed or expired, the system tried infinitely to back up the VMs managed with that vCenter until stopped manually (instead of failing automatically)
Security issues and vulnerabilities: jQuery End of Life Detection, Object Extensions, and XSS-related; Dropbear Mishandling Filenames and Detection Consolidation; Diffie-Hellman Ephemeral Key Exchange DoS; Weak Host Key and MAC Algorithms
Failure to open a support tunnel on the appliance using TUI if the tunnel number was out of the range 1–200
Appliances with no battery backup units installed on their RAID controllers showed an irrelevant warning (Battery Not Present)
If the appliance was hard restarted, the system database could not be loaded automatically
After breaking the network interface bonding on the appliance without applying the changes right away, the user could not set the static IP address if it was the same as the one used in the bonding
Configuration of the support tunnel was not retained after rebooting the appliance in the NoRAID mode since it was stored on the RAID
List of clients on the secondary (cloud) appliance did not update unless replication was stopped and started again
Appliance software RAID could not be initialized for a few disks from other RAIDs
Appliance booted in the NoRAID mode could not be accessed from the Dashboard
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.10 or 8.10.1, the network manager deactivated the network ports (especially if the network interface bonding was active)
Incorrect validation of the network settings in the appliance Quick Start (the Next button was grayed out as if the DHCP settings did not pass validation)
When restoring a VMware VM backup as a new VM, the wizard showed the Finish button instead of the Next one
Dialog with the first step in the Browse and Restore Wizard for the Microsoft SQL data had incorrect sizes and did not show the restore options
After editing the default settings for VMs in the appliance Management Console › Clients › Edit, the user was redirected to the Clients tab
A job schedule name could not be edited (appliance Management Console › Settings › Backups › Job Schedules)
8.10.1
DR image incremental backup job failed to merge with the previous one in the synthetic full, but had the successful status
If a backed up VMware VM became unavailable on the ESXi host, it could not be restored because the restore wizard would not start
Replication hanged often for a few minutes trying to process and send the UnimplementedInvokedMethodCollection.xml file
The server.xml log file on the appliance was flooded with the warning Job doesn't have startTime
The appliance Management Console did not start properly and showed the error message “Boot groups could not be retrieved” because of a failed disk in the appliance RAID
Upon re-initialization, the appliance started in the emergency mode, or started in the normal mode, but did not retain any settings upon the next restart
After updating firmware to version 8.10, 960 and 970 appliance models failed to re-initialize and booted in the NoRAID mode
8.10.0
Support of SMB 3.0 protocol by the appliance
Live migration of VMs that allows you to power them on without the need to wait for restore to complete (VMware vMotion)
Option to specify network for a VM during the restore so that the VM can be immediately used after the restore
DDFS shredder statistics (appliance Management Console › Settings › Tools › Deduplicated File System)
A new host (support2.myinfrascale.net) to open a technical support tunnel to the appliance
Upon logging in to the appliance Management Console for the first time, the system now shows the Terms of Service to accept
Turned off anonymous access to the appliance network share to eliminate the NULL Session vulnerability
Increased the speed of the backup data replication by optimizing the metadata compression
Retention policies are not applied now to those backup jobs that are replicated at the moment
Improved the loading speed of the appliance Management Console
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.5, the incremental DR backup jobs, when run concurrently, started taking four times longer to complete
Browse and restore failure (error “Invalid partition data!”)
VMware VM restore failure (error “Failed to create VM on restore”)
Dynamic disks were not available for browsing and restoring
Upon rebooting a VM booted on the appliance (Management Console › Boot › Active), the VM stopped responding with the libivrt.xml file spoiled pointing to the disk images in the initial backup job
VM boot verification on the appliance could occasionally fail and show the message “Guest has not initialized the display (yet)”
Appliance could not send an alert email about no free space
After canceling a DR or a VM restore job in progress, the dialog with results showed two records about the canceled job instead of one
The system failed to load any information in the Save/Restore Configuration section (appliance Management Console › Settings)
After replacing a failed disk in the RAID and rebooting the appliance, or after restarting the appliance with a failed disk in the RAID, the appliance booted in the emergency mode with inoperable network instead of the NoRAID mode as designed
An email notification sent by the appliance upon the license server communication failure included incorrect contact phone numbers
Appliance could occasionally suggest updating its firmware to the previous version
Backup jobs could not be deleted from the appliance because the system boot manager blocked their removal despite there were no active booted VMs
Failure to completely delete a backup job from the appliance (the system removed the job from the Management Console, but the files and metadata associated with the job were still present on the appliance RAID)
Occasional warning Insufficient Storage Space on /run/initiramfs/overlayfs in the Notices widget in the appliance Management Console
Error after starting the appliance in the NoRAID mode and logging in to its Management Console
8.9.0
Support of 4K sector hard drives and virtual disks for backup and restore operations
Support of Hyper-V clusters for backup and restore operations
Support of VMware HotAdd transport mode that improves performance and increases the speed of VMware VM backups
Option to check if the DR image restore disk supports the RAID controller of the target computer to properly perform the restore
Updated virtual appliance for VMware to use hardware version 11 supported by ESXi 6.0 and later
Improved handling of multiple running VMware VM backup processes so that if one process hangs or stops, and requires restarting, it does not affect the other running backup processes
Appliance operating system now supports the XFS trim/discard for SSDs to decrease the number of writes, increase writing throughput, and thus prolong the drive service life
If free disk space on the appliance is critically low, all running jobs are canceled, new jobs cannot be started, all booted VMs are suspended, and new VMs cannot be booted
Network adapter type in the virtual appliance for VMware from E1000 to VMXNET 3
Hyper-V backup failure because the DR engine could not properly include and exclude the selected disks within the volume set (error “Failed to start SnapshotSet”)
System logs of the appliance were full of error messages regarding the failure to push the monitoring statistics (“pushing monitoring statistics failed”)
Every second subsequent incremental DR image or Hyper-V backup job took more time than the first incremental backup even with no significant changes to the backup data set
Appliance could not start properly because of the incorrect startup settings generated after the firmware update (invalid /raider/configs/bay.properties file)
Appliances with small DOM could not boot after diagnostics
Backup jobs could not be deleted from the appliance because the system boot manager blocked their removal despite there were no active booted VMs
If appliance was hard restarted, the system database could not be loaded automatically
Appliance failed to update the system time and date via NTP servers when configured manually in the Management Console › Settings › Date/Time (error “Update of time failed. Please check the configuration or try again later”)
After the boot verification of a backup was interrupted (for example, by hard restart or shutdown of the appliance), the system failed to boot any new VMs
DR image backup failure because the DR engine could not properly include and exclude the selected disks within the volume set (error “Couldn’t prepare backup ranges for {GUID}\Disks\harddiskN”)
After an unexpected restart or shutdown of the appliance, the jobs that were running before the event remained in the system database, but were not visible in the Management Console. Also, those jobs were not affected by the backup retention policies, and thus took the appliance disk space.
After deploying a new virtual appliance for VMware and upon its first boot, the system could not mount DDFS, and thus the appliance was not usable (error “block dedup setup failed”)
After updating the appliance firmware from version 8.7.5 to 8.8.0, the Management Console of the appliance could not be loaded and was unavailable (failure to start the stark service)
DR backup agent could not work in Windows with FIPS mode turned on because of the non-approved cryptographic algorithms
8.8.0
Appliance now shows the amount of time a booted VM has been running and available
Appliance now shows the ID of the backup job, from which the VM was booted
Option to enable appliance to collect and record performance data about its boot process for profiling and troubleshooting
To improve the connection to and interaction with the appliance, the system now limits the metadata transfer rate if the network bandwidth for replication is limited (appliance Management Console › Replication › Mode/Options)
To avoid system overload, the appliance does not now pre-generate and show the VNC addresses used to access the booted VMs via a browser-based VNC viewer
NIC bonding settings are now available again for changing and configuring via the appliance Management Console
During the Hyper-V backup, if the backed up VM had two or more virtual disk files (VHDX) attached with the same name, but with different paths, the appliance would back up only the latest detected one, while overwriting the others
The time zone set manually in the appliance Management Console was not applied at the core system level and thus shifted the backup start timings
DR image backup failed with the CRC data error (bad blocks)
DR image backup jobs failed with error “The system cannot find the file specified”
Interrupting (restarting the appliance during) the process of conversion of a VM booted on the appliance to a backup resulted in the inconsistent backup data
“NullPointerException” error during the Hyper-V VM backup restore
Missing step to configure the network switch in the restore wizard for Hyper-V VM backup
When browsing and restoring a DR image or a VM backup, and if network connection with the appliance was lost, browse and restore could not be performed anymore, no protected space was shown for all jobs, and boot verification failed with no boot device available
No notification shown in the Notices widget after starting the support tunnel and then restarting the appliance
The time zone set manually in the appliance Management Console was not set at the core system level, but was shown correctly in the Management Console
When updating the appliance firmware to version 8.7.x, the appliance lost the gateway and the update did not complete
After updating firmware to version 8.7.3, the appliance had insufficient disk space for operating system and database to work properly (error “Insufficient Storage Space on /run/initramfs/overlayfs”)
After updating firmware to version 8.7.x, the appliance could not start properly because of the incorrect startup settings (invalid /raider/configs/bay.properties file)
After updating the appliance firmware from version 8.6.1 to 8.7.3, the service license became invalid, and the appliance had to be registered in the Dashboard again
Failure to import backup jobs if the total number of the backed up files for all jobs on a client exceeded certain value
Updating the appliance firmware from version 8.6.1 to 8.7.3 resulted in complete appliance re-initialization
When submitting a support request, the appliance ignored the SMPT port set in the email settings, and always tried to send emails using port 25
When trying to access a primary appliance remotely from the Dashboard, the system redirected to the wrong appliance
8.7.5
Appliance now writes data to DDFS always from the beginning by default, but not sequentially
8.7.4
Improved DDFS and replication performance by decreasing data fragmentation and thus optimizing data read operations
Failure to access the appliance remotely from the Dashboard after the lasting disconnection (“Error on getting browse URL”)
Failure to back up a Hyper-V VM that included a virtual disk with the uppercase file name extension (error “No disks for job”)
8.7.3
Appliance Console Configuration Utility failed to update the current network configuration when changed in the Management Console and showed a message that the network was not configured (when in fact it was)
After changing the DNS settings (appliance Management Console › Settings › DNS) and restarting the appliance, the system reverted the settings to how they were before the change
Appliance could sometimes stop replicating backup data because of the process deadlock and showed the Stalled replication status (appliance Management Console › Replication › Status)
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.7.0, 8.7.1, or 8.7.2, the Management Console failed to load and an empty screen was shown instead
Secondary (cloud) appliance lost connection to the Dashboard and could not be accessed remotely
When booting the appliance with encrypted RAID in the NORAID mode, the system still mounted the RAID
8.7.2
After updating the appliance with an exported network interface (appliance Management Console › Settings › Network Adapters › Export Virtual option) to firmware version 8.7 or 8.7.1, and then turning the export off, the network interface configuration broke that led to the appliance could not back up and recover data
After updating the appliance connected to two different subnets on two network interfaces to firmware version 8.7 or 8.7.1, the appliance lost network connectivity because of the broken routing
8.7.1
Backup & Disaster Recovery now requires enabling NTLMv2 authentication on the protected client to establish connection with the appliance, and to properly make Hyper-V and DR image backups
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.7, DR image backups started to fail because the appliance had no SMB users for the DR backup agent to connect to the appliance network share (error “The network name cannot be found”)
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.7, the system stopped generating URL addresses for NoVNC connections to booted VMs, but showed only ports instead (appliance Management Console › Boot › Active)
After unsuccessful update of the appliance firmware to version 8.7, DDFS could be mounted several times instead of only once that led to unexpected service behavior
After updating the appliance with configured NIC bonding to firmware version 8.7, NIC had no IP address assigned
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.7, network settings on a secondary (cloud) appliance were not available (appliance Management Console › Settings › Network Adapters)
8.7.0
Major update of the appliance core operating system to improve security and reliability, and to ensure the long-term support
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.7, NIC bonding settings are now not available for changing via the Management Console (if they were configured before the update) or not shown at all (if they were not configured before the update)
Default number of VMs that can be booted on the appliance depending on its model
When the appliance is creating a backup job from a VM booted on it (fallback job), the system shows a notification in the appliance Management Console (Dashboard › Notices widget, and Settings › Reboot/Shutdown) to inform about potential data loss upon the appliance restart or shutdown
Improved management of needless files that are left after each new Hyper-V VM backup and can take extra space
DR image and Hyper-V backups failed after updating the appliance firmware to version 8.7 (error “Storage added but is unavailable”)
DR image backup using the standard DR engine was marked as Successfully Completed despite no disks were backed up (error “No disks for job {job-name} in directory …”)
After changing the content of a file in a Hyper-V VM, and then backing up the VM, content of the file in the backup remained unchanged
Incorrect network name shown in the appliance Management Console › Boot › Active for a VM booted on the bridged network
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.7, client names in the Client column in the appliance Management Console › Jobs › Recent Jobs were not shown
Buttons on the upper right (Refresh, Activate configuration, and Logoff) in the appliance Management Console were not shown after reducing the screen resolution
8.6.1
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.6, backup of Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server failed because of the changes to the default VSS configuration
8.6.0
Backup
New default retention policies for backups. New policies apply only to the newly setup and configured appliance. Previously configured appliances keep their current retention policies even after firmware update to 8.6.
After updating the appliance firmware to version 8.6, the system automatically converts all existing LiveBMR backup jobs to the file-level backup jobs
DR image backup and all related settings are now available only for clients running Windows
DR engine now enforces full DR image backup if the system detects changes in the disk layout of a client between incremental backups
After DR image backup of a client with GPT disk containing only EFI system partition, DR image was browsable, but could not be booted on the appliance because GPT disk was excluded from backup
DR image backup could fail because standard DR engine included non-critical system state components (with NotSystemState flag) when creating VSS snapshot
Incremental DR image backups failed on the systems that had several instances of the same VSS writer (error “An item with the same key has already been added”)
Restore
Support of LiveBMR jobs for bare-metal restore
Windows LiveBMR restore disk image from the appliance Management Console › Settings › Downloads
LiveBMR option when editing the file set of a client (appliance Management Console › Clients › Edit › File Set)
Hyper-V
Backup jobs that started simultaneously for multiple VMs hosted on the same Hyper-V host could result in some of those jobs finished successfully with warnings or failed after numerous retries
Hyper-V VM backup using the standard DR engine could fail because metadata file path created by VSS for VM snapshots exceeded Windows maximum length of 255 characters (error “The system cannot find the path specified”)
Backup agent
DR backup agent could crash while parsing output data from DR engine (error “System.OutOfMemoryException”)
DR backup agent installers for non-supported operating systems (macOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, NetWare, OpenServer, HP/UX, and AIX) from the appliance Management Console › Settings › Downloads
Various
After DR image or VM backup of a Windows machine in the hibernate state or with Fast Startup (Fast Boot) turned on, the backup could not be booted on the appliance
VMware-related functionality on the appliance stopped working if there was at least one registered VMware VM with NVMe controller (Note: Appliance still does not support backup of VMware VMs with NVMe controllers)
Appliance could incorrectly detect failed verification of a backup job during re-importing and thus show the job as Successfully Completed
8.5.0
Boot
Ability to connect to VMs booted on the secondary appliance (set up in the cloud) via web-based VNC connection
Improved safety of data of a VM booted on the appliance by preventing deletion of the backup job, from which the VM was booted, until another backup is created from the booted VM
Safeguarded integrity and consistency of data of a VM booted on the appliance during the VM backup by preventing all manipulations with the VM (settings editing, power management, backup, deletion) until backup is completed
VMware
Increased timeout to detect completion of a VMware VM backup job from 10 min to 1 hour so the system would not block its progress too early and mark it as failed
Appliance can now connect to VMware vCenter 7.0—resolved error “VI SDK invoke exception.dom4j.DocumentException: null Nested exception: null”)
Hyper-V (beta functionality)
Standard DR engine now supports Hyper-V-related functionality (agentless VM backup, restore, browse and restore)
Ability to restore Hyper-V VMs to a host with Hyper-V version different from the one they were backed up from (according to the restore compatibility matrix)
Hyper-V subtab in the appliance Management Console › Clients is now available by default
When restoring a Hyper-V VM to another Hyper-V host, if network switch configurations of the VM and the host mismatch, it is now possible to manually map virtual switches of the VM to virtual switches on the host
To ensure data consistency at the time of backup, the appliance enforces full backup of Hyper-V VM clients if integrity of files necessary for incremental backup was violated
8.4.1
System showed false-negative status (Completed With Errors) for DR image backup jobs made with Standard DR engine
After updating the appliance firmware to v8.4.0, time to complete an incremental DR image backup increased significantly because of the issues while cloning backup job files
8.4.0
After updating DR backup agent on a client, the system may run the next scheduled DR image backup for that client as full (regardless of the scheduled backup level), and then change it to what was set before. (Note: After updating to version 8.4, the system will definitely force this behavior.)
DR image backup failed because of the errors with VSS writers not critical for getting basic backups
LiveBMR backup job marked as Successfully Completed despite errors failed to replicate to the secondary appliance. This prevented replication of other backups in queue.
LiveBMR backup job was marked as Successfully Completed despite errors (error “java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid path”)
LiveBMR backup jobs with ASR writer data failed to import, and hence could not be deduplicated, replicated, browsed, and archived
If the appliance had proxy enabled and configured (appliance Management Console › Settings › Proxy), this could result in the appliance performance slowdown, or even prevent the appliance from completing its tasks (for example, stop DR image backups)
After restarting the appliance, list of VMs (if any) in the appliance Management Console › Clients › Hyper-V could sometimes be empty
Layout and styles of elements in the appliance Management Console › Job › Importing Jobs so the information in the lower part be more visible and readable
Storage bar in the appliance Management Console would remain green despite the appliance showed a storage space warning or alert
After booting a backup job as VM on the appliance, and then deleting that backup job, the system failed to apply and save changes to the booted VM
VMware VM backup jobs could occasionally stop progressing, and hence prevent the following backup jobs from running because of the ‘concurrent job’ limit
8.3.0
Push Backup Agent functionality was replaced with Update Backup Agent, meaning that DR backup agent for Windows cannot now be installed on a client remotely right from the appliance Management Console (that is, pushed when adding or editing a client). Instead, backup agent can be only updated remotely if it is already installed, running and paired with the appliance.
Virtual appliances for Hyper-V Server 2008 and 2012–2016 were combined in one virtual appliance that can be deployed in all supported Hyper-V environments
Error when trying to boot a VM on the appliance (“Job not found”) because the system failed to properly clean configurations and data of VMs that were previously booted for verification and considered to be running while not shown in the appliance Management Console
Appliance reported a Hyper-V or a VMware VM backup job as Successfully Completed (appliance Management Console › Jobs › History) despite the backed up VM did not have any virtual hard disk drives
8.2.0
Disaster recovery backup agent
DR backup agent for Windows and the standard DR engine now require at least Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.2
DR backup agent cannot now be installed on a client remotely right from the appliance Management Console (that is, pushed when adding or editing a client). Instead, pushing the backup agent will only update it if it was installed already
Backup and restore
DR image backup jobs using the standard DR engine could fail if the client returned null response when requested to attach remote storage
After making a Linux file and folder backup and then restoring it to the appliance network share, the restored data was not shown in the appliance Management Console › Settings › Tools › Appliance Network Share, and was unavailable through network
DR image backup jobs using the standard DR engine could fail after running for a long time (“An unexpected network error occurred”)
Boot and boot verification
Appliance would schedule backup jobs for boot verification only on alternate days (regardless of system settings) because of improper handling of time zones and limit to verify only one backup job per day
Monitoring and reporting
Appliance would not send information to the Dashboard about completion of a backup job because of the false-negative failure to send information about the start of that job. This resulted in discrepancies between the backup job statuses shown in the appliance Management Console and in the Dashboard
Appliance failed to send the daily report with boot verification screenshots included
VMware
Option to reset Changed Block Tracking for VMware VMs right from the appliance Management Console
Various
Reviewed and edited texts in the appliance job message logs for consistency in use of the DR engine names
8.1.0
Disaster recovery engine
DR image backup job failure when committing the backup metadata because the system could not find the metadata files
Incremental DR image backup job failure because the DR engine was unable to read the volume information
Replication and failed verification
Improved the replication process by making the appliance to transfer the SBMF data only once—if and after the replication completed successfully
When configuring replication, the Propagate Manual Delete option is now cleared by default (appliance Management Console › Replication › Mode/Options › Options › Remote Appliance Information)
Appliance could respond with significant delays or even stop responding during a high-rate replication process
Boot and boot verification
Option to set DNS when configuring the DR LAN settings for boot orchestration in the appliance Management Console › Boot › Orchestration › LAN
Monitoring and reporting
Appliance shows a warning that it is unable to connect and send monitoring data to the Dashboard not only if the account credentials used to register the appliance in the Dashboard changed, but also if the trial period for the account ended, and if the account was locked because of the security reasons
VMware
Appliance now shows the status and details of the VMware Tools installed on a VMware client (appliance Management Console › Clients › VMware › VMware Tools column)
Appliance would continue making full backups of a VMware VM instead of incremental even if the previous full backup completed successfully with CBT enabled
Message logs of a VMware VM backup job did not show any notification when the appliance was making a full backup instead of incremental if CBT was disabled at the virtual disk level
User experience and user interface
Reworded the error message shown in the message logs of a backup job if the job fails because of the Bacula Director service restart
After adding a Hyper-V cluster to the appliance, Activate Configuration would become active for a few seconds
Broken links to download the DR backup agent for Linux and the DR restore disk (appliance Management Console › Settings › Tools › Downloads)
Storage bar in the appliance Management Console would remain green despite the appliance showed a storage space warning or alert
Various
Message logs of a backup job now include extra information related to the job (appliance firmware version, backup client ID, backup client IP address, backup agent ID)
Appliance now uses SMB2 by default unless it was previously configured to use SMB1 before this update
Legacy retention settings shown in the properties of a client (appliance Management Console › Clients › Summary › Properties › Basic Configuration)
8.0.0
Disaster recovery backup agent
Backup agent 8.0 now supports Windows versions only as of Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Updated installer of the backup agent to include components of the Ignyte (Standard) DR engine
Failure to install the backup agent on Windows 7 because of the missing required updates despite they are already present in the system
Disaster recovery engine
Ignyte is now the default standard DR engine
Improved incremental backup of the hard drive volumes after defragmentation
Improved speed of upload to the SMB share using the variable buffer size (from 64 KB to 1 MB)
After changing the DR engine for a Hyper-V client (appliance Management Console › Clients › Edit), backups failed because the change was not applied on the client side
Standard DR engine could not start backup if a ReFS volume was present in the system
DR image backup failed when the standard DR engine was trying to retrieve metadata of a drive volume not included in the backup
Standard DR engine failed to create a DR image backup of a system with an encrypted volume even if it was not included in the backup
Backup and restore
Ability to download folders from backups when browsing and restoring
Support of NVMe drives for bare-metal restore using the DR restore disk
Extra global backup settings (appliance Management Console › Settings › Backups › Advanced Settings)
When starting backup of a physical machine manually, option to back up as DR image is selected by default (appliance Management Console › Clients › Summary › Manual Backup button)
Restoring files and folders to the appliance network share failed with the “Unknown stream ignored” error
Replication and failed verification
Improper handling of files smaller than 50 MB in a backup job, which was replicated and interrupted while in progress, resulted in errors and different statuses of that job on the primary and on the secondary appliances
Propagate Manual Delete option did not work (appliance Management Console › Replication › Mode/Options › Options › Remote Appliance Information)
Boot and boot verification
Options to enable boot verification and to set its timeout are now configured per client, but not globally (appliance Management Console › Clients › Edit › Boot)
Changes to the settings of one boot group (where a client belongs) applied to all other boot groups (appliance Management Console › Clients › Edit › Boot)
Monitoring and reporting
Email alerts and notifications sent by the appliance now include its serial number (UUID)
If you delete a client from the appliance, the system also removes all relevant monitoring data from the Dashboard
Appliance now uses proxy, if configured, to communicate with the Dashboard
Appliance now reports a backup job as definitely failed only after all attempts to retry or rerun it on errors (if configured in the appliance Management Console › Clients › Edit › Error Recovery)
An archive automatically attached to the support request sent from the appliance Management Console › Support contained not all log files
VMware
CBT is now automatically enabled before backup at both VM and virtual disk levels by default
Backup of a VM with enabled CBT failed with a FileFault error when querying for the changed disk areas
Restore of a VM backup to ESXi 6.7 U3 or vCenter 6.7 U3 failed if the backed up VM had automatic video card detection
VM backup failed if the retrieved SSL certificate thumbprint from the host was null because of the network issues
User experience and user interface
Diagnostics tab in the appliance Management Console
If username or password of the account used to register the appliance in the Dashboard is changed, the system now shows a notification in the Notices widget (appliance Management Console › Dashboard)
When a backup job is pushed from the secondary appliance to the primary appliance, the system now shows a notification in the Notices widget (appliance Management Console › Dashboard)
Redesigned UI of the appliance Management Console
Renamed DR engine options available when editing a client in the appliance Management Console › Clients › Edit (Ignyte (beta) to Standard, and Standard to Legacy)
Updated text of the message shown after connection testing failed if replication was configured only on the primary appliance, but not on the secondary appliance (appliance Management Console › Replication › Mode/Options › Remote Appliance Information › Test Connection)
Arrangement and presentation of sections on the Settings tab in the Management Console of the secondary appliance
Appliance did not log the user out of the Management Console after restart or shutdown
Garbage Collection History table did not update automatically after the garbage collection process completed (appliance Management Console › Settings › Tools › Deduplicated File System)
Inconsistent date formats in the appliance Management Console
Incorrect default retention policy settings for VM clients shown when adding a VMware connection (appliance Management Console › Clients › VMware › Add Connections)
Incorrect sorting of VMs in the appliance Management Console › Clients › VMware using the Allow CBT column
Incorrect version of the operating system shown in the properties of clients running Windows Server 2019
Information about the VMware host did not update automatically in the appliance Management Console › Clients › VMware › Host Version column
Invalid port displayed when viewing the Hyper-V connections (appliance Management Console › Clients › Hyper-V › View Connections)
Misplaced checkboxes when browsing and restoring backups in the appliance Management Console
RAID status did not update automatically until the Refresh button was clicked (appliance Management Console › Settings › Tools › RAID Configuration)
Secondary appliance showed progress of a backup job started on the primary appliance
When logging in to the appliance Management Console, the login form was not blocking after sending the request and until receiving the response
Diagnostics item in the Help menu in the appliance Management Console
Various
Quick Start Wizard now shows Network Interface Configuration first (instead of the login dialog) if the appliance is unable to access internet
Job message logs now include details for all Hyper-V and DR image backup and restore errors (if any)
Seeding is unavailable now if replication is not configured (appliance Management Console › Settings › Tools › Seeding)
Increased size of the file that reserves disk space on the appliance up to 10 GB
A backup job, which should be deleted under the retention policies, could not be deleted from the primary appliance if it failed verification on the associated secondary appliance
A ZIP file downloaded when browsing and restoring a backup job contained no files if unpacked using the Windows built-in tool
Failure to restore the appliance configuration because of the incorrect processing of the uploaded configuration file (appliance Management Console › Settings › Tools › Save/Restore Configuration)
Negation operator (!) did not work when used in filters in the appliance Management Console › Jobs › History
When trying to search files in a client with no backup jobs performed, the system showed an error instead of notification (appliance Management Console › Clients › Summary › Search)
Recover Catalog feature (appliance Management Console › Jobs › Importing Jobs)