PlateSpin Protect 10.1 Release Notes

July 14, 2011

1.0 About This Release

Version 10.1 provides several new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.

For Release Notes documents that accompanied previous 10.x.x releases, visit the PlateSpin Protect 10 Documentation Web Site and go to Previous Releases at the bottom of the main page.

2.0 New in Version 10.1

  • New Workload Types: This release supports the protection of new workload types/versions:

    • Open Enterprise Server (OES) 2

    • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 9

    • Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 5.3, 5.4

  • Support for Virtual Clusters: You can now select a specific VMware vSphere 4.1 DRS cluster as your workload protection target.

  • Bandwidth Throttling: This release provides greater control over the amount of network resources used by PlateSpin Protect.

    See Bandwidth Throttling.

  • Compression: This release provides ways to reduce your networking costs by enabling you to have volume data compressed on the source workload before it is replicated to the target.

    See Data Compression.

  • Support for NAT: This release provides support for network configurations that use Network Address Translation (NAT). This removes the requirement to have TCP port 3725 open on target workloads.

    See Protection Across Public and Private Networks Through NAT.

  • Support for GPT: This release provides support for source workloads (Windows Server 2008 and later) that use the GUID Partition Table (GPT) disk partition layout standard.

    Supported only for workload protection to a VM; not supported for image protection.

  • Support for Thin Disks: This release supports thin (thin-provisioned) virtual disks that appear to the VM to have a set size but only consume the amount of disk space that is required by that disk.

  • Enhanced support for VMware networking: This release supports:

    • Up to 10 virtual NICs per VM (ESX 4.x only)

    • VMXNET 2 and VMXNET 3 virtual network adapters

  • Improved Failback-to-Physical Experience: The mechanism of failback to a physical machine has undergone several improvements and now provides a much broader support for vendor-specific driver management. In addition, the PlateSpin boot ISO image includes new tools, including a Windows driver injection utility for more robust driver management.

  • Support for Linux Failback to a Paravirtualized VM: You can now do a failback of a Linux workload to a paravirtualized VM on XEN-on-SLES (version 10).

    See Linux Failback to a Paravirtualized VM on Xen-on-SLES.

  • Discontinued: VMware ESX 3.0.x systems are no longer supported as a protection target.

  • International Language Support: This release provides international language support (Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, French, German, and Japanese) for the product interface and the documentation.

    The English version of the documentation at the PlateSpin Protect 10 Documentation Web Site, which is updated on a regular basis, should be considered as the most up-to-date version.

3.0 Bugs Fixed in Version 10.1

Version 10.1 addresses a multitude of bugs, including these:

  • 640618 Failback failure of Windows workloads with dynamic disks: An incremental Failback operation fails if the protected workload has dynamic disks with no drive letters assigned.

  • 677413 Target VM blue screens with ‘Stop 7B’ error: A target VM might blue screen with a Stop 7B error after attempting to create the initial workload replica through syncing a Windows 2008 x64 and a Windows 2008 R2 workload.

  • 684192 Resizing disks causing blue screen: Windows workloads protected through block-level replication blue screened when their disks were resized.

  • Improper job state: Jobs remained in a running state even though they had completed or failed.

  • 694925: Block-level replications with the encryption or compression option enabled failed after 24 hours.

  • 688471: Linux replications failed if they took more than 24 hours.

4.0 Known Issues in Version 10.1

  • No failback to GPT: Protected workloads with disks that use the GPT standard cannot be failed back to the original hardware or other GPT-enabled hardware.

  • 704953 Erroneous localhost.localdomain hostname in Linux failback: On failback, if the target hostname is set to No Change, the workload is assigned a localhost.localdomain hostname. The issue is under investigation.

    Workaround: For the target hostname in Linux failback details, select the Change to option and specify a target hostname explicitly.

  • 595490 Preserving boot partition on failback causes failback to stall: In some failback scenarios, the system improperly allows you to preserve an active (or boot) partition on the target, preventing the target from booting properly. This issue is under investigation.

    Workaround: In Failback Details, do not opt to preserve any boot partitions on the target.

  • 702152 Protection over a WAN takes a long time if VM container has a large number of datastores: Under some circumstances the process of locating the appropriate ISO image required for booting the target might take longer than expected. This might happen when your PlateSpin Protect Server is connected to the VM container over a WAN and your VM container has a large number of datastores. This issue is under investigation.

  • 698721 Missing pre-installation requirement (documentation): Installation instructions require that IIS on 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 be configured to run in 32-bit mode. This requirement applies to the 64-bit versions of all supported operating systems, including Windows Server 2008 (64-bit) and Windows Server 2008 R2 (not stated in non-English documentation).

    See KB Article 7920915

  • 698611 Full cluster replication failure under certain circumstances: If a Windows 2008 R2 Cluster protection contract is set up through the sync to an existing VM method, and if the active cluster node flips prior to the full replication, the full replication job fails.

    See KB Article 7008771.

  • 685509 Failure with ‘Access Denied’ error during replication to an image stored on a network share: The Controller service on Image servers that use network shares for storage does not preserve the service Log On As credentials after an upgrade. Image operations fail with an Access Denied message.

    See KB Article 7008772.

  • 506154 Special character in datastore name causing replication problems: Protection fails if it is attempted on ESX datastores that have the character '+' in the datastore name.

    See KB Article 7008750.

  • 655828 Failure to mount NSS volumes: Upon failover or test failover, NSS volumes with snapshots enabled are not automatically mounted as expected.

    See KB Article 7008773.

  • 638392 ESX 4.1: Direct host discovery results in missing VM port groups if dvSwitch port groups share the same name.

    Workaround: Ensure that port group names are unique.

  • 680259 (VMware 4.1) Poor networking performance by traffic-forwarding VMs: In some scenarios, the replica of a workload that is forwarding network traffic (for example, if the workload’s purpose is to serve as a network bridge for NAT, VPN, or a firewall) might show significant network performance degradation. This is related to a problem with VMXNET 2 and VMXNET 3 adapters that have LRO (large receive offload) enabled.

    Workaround: Disable LRO on the virtual network adapter. For details, see the VMware vSphere 4.1 Release Notes (scroll down to the bulleted item Poor TCP performance...).

  • No software RAID support for Linux workloads: PlateSpin Protect does not support Linux workloads with volumes on software RAID.

  • 590635 Inconsistent failover results after upgrading: Following an upgrade to PlateSpin Protect, a failover operation might fail to complete or might not apply the correct failover parameters, such as the proper hostname and workgroup settings.

    Workaround: Before performing a failover, manually run an incremental.

  • 581860 Browser exception in the Chinese edition of the product: Attempting to connect to the PlateSpin Protect Server with a browser that does not have a specific version of Chinese added might result in Web server errors. For correct operation, use your browser’s configuration settings to add a specific Chinese language (for example, Chinese [zh-cn] or Chinese [zh-tw]). Do not use the culture-neutral Chinese [zh] language.

  • 610918 Unresponsive Expand and Collapse icons in integrated help: On some systems with enhanced browser security settings (such as Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Server 2008), the Expand and Collapse icons (+ and -) in the Table of Contents might fail to work. To fix the issue, enable JavaScript in your browser:

    • Internet Explorer: Click Tools > Internet Options > Security tab > Internet zone > Custom level, then select the Enable option for the Active Scripting feature.

    • Firefox: Click Tools > Options > Content tab, then select the Enable JavaScript option.

  • 558937 Failure of block-level replications that use VSS (Windows): If you are using third-party VSS-based backup software, block-level replications might occasionally fail.

    Workaround: Use blackout windows (see your User Guide).