Release notes for Acronis Backup for VMware 9 Update 2

Release date: February 24, 2016

Build: 10571

Overview

Acronis Backup for VMware 9 is the next version of our extremely easy to deploy and use solution for backup and recovery of VMware vSphere. Version 9 includes many new features such as:

1. Application-aware Single-pass VM Backup! In addition to previously available Exchange granular recovery, Acronis Backup for VMware 9 adds application-aware, single-pass, agent-less VM backup and recovery for:
   • Microsoft SQL Server – down to individual databases
   • Microsoft SharePoint Server – down to individual documents and items
   • Microsoft Active Directory – ensuring full Domain Controller recoverability
2. Management Dashboard! A simple web dashboard displays the status of multiple Acronis Backup for VMware 9 installations.
3. Configuration Restore! Save and restore Acronis Backup for VMware 9 configuration to enable complete protection.

In addition, we fixed many issues and implemented several improvements suggested by our customers.

Before you install the product, please carefully read the “Installation notes” and “Known issues” sections of this document.

Installation notes

If you have “Restore”/“Validate”/“Exchange Restore” tasks, they will be removed, due to architectural changes, during the upgrade from the 6/7th version and should be recreated manually. The existing “Backup” tasks will be properly upgraded.

List of changes/fixes (compared with build 9.0.10535):

Changes

• Support for the subscription licensing model. For more information, please refer to the Acronis Backup Licensing FAQ.
• Support for Acronis Backup for Windows Server licenses. Each license is assigned to a single ESX(i) host (the “per-host” licensing scheme is applied).

  Known issue. Acronis Backup for Windows Server licenses are shown as two-socket licenses in the Acronis Backup for VMware 9 GUI.

List of changes/fixes (compared with build 9.0.10007):

Changes

• Added full support for vSphere 6.

Common Fixes

• [ABV-1767] Updated Linux kernel in bootable media and virtual appliance environments. As the result, the problem of accessing SMB shares on specific NAS devices with NFS support (for example, QNAP) is fixed.
• [TTASK-8117] Fixed: intermittent connection failure to Acronis Backup for VMware Centralized Dashboard web interface.

Run VM from backup:

• [TTASK-7772] Fixed: Running a virtual machine from a backup on an ESXi 5.5 host failed with “Failed to obtain server object 'config.hardware.device'”.

Backup/restore/validation:

• [TTASK-9702] Fixed: SQL databases are not available in the restore wizard in specific cases. However, they can be restored via File Recovery.
• [ABV-4223] Fixed: Recovery of a virtual machine with hardware version 10 onto ESXi 5.5 causes virtual hardware downgrade to version 8.
• [AVMPIX-4363] Fixed: Recovery of files/folders from a backup of a virtual machine that contains an NTFS volume with enabled deduplication fails.
• [TTASK-8185] Fixed: Mailbox/e-mails recovery from specific huge Exchange databases hangs on 5%.

Replication:

• [AVMPIX-4537] Fixed: The hardware version of a replica virtual machine does not match that of the original virtual machine.

List of changes/fixes (compared with build 9.0.9802):

Changes

• The product has been renamed to Acronis Backup for VMware
• Added full support for vSphere 5.5 including ESXi configuration backup
• Added ability to apply default backup options to existing backup tasks (to change e-mail notification settings in all tasks at once for example)
• Added ability to restore VM spreading its disks across multiple datastores
• Added an option to skip certain applications from application-aware processing
• Added an option to perform file recovery “as is” without zipping (thus keeping the files security permissions after recovery)

Common fixes

• ACEP tasks are not triggering alerts on the dashboard upon failure anymore
• Web console: application-aware backup option is no longer unchecked when you edit the task if it was enabled before
• Run VM from backup: fixed “Unmount & Save” operation for VMs running on vSphere 5.5 which contain >2TB disks
• Fixed resetting of custom RAM/CPU settings to default while performing appliance update/upgrade. Now these settings are left as they were before the update/upgrade procedure.
• Fixed installation of Windows Agent on Windows Server 2012 Core
• Fixed adding RDM disks to Virtual Appliance (to be used as locally attached storage)
• Increased the default size of the 2nd disk for Centralized Dashboard appliance. Previously the size of the disk was too small and could overfill which broke connection to web console of the Centralized Dashboard after some time.

Backup/restore/validation

• Fixed several “Failed to mount SMB share” errors on various shares (specific NAS devices + shares on Windows 2012/2012 R2)
• Fixed improper archive retention for backups stored on Acronis Online storage
• Fixed improper archive retention for backups stored on specific FTP servers
• Fixed “error code 92” and other similar errors while backing up to Acronis Online Storage
• Fixed “The given URI is empty” error while recovering specific files from Linux VMs (files with specific encoding)
• Fixed ESXi configuration backups for ESXi without vmkwarning.log in default location (when the ESXi logs default location is changed)
• Storage vMotion for VM is now properly temporarily disabled while backup of it is running.

Replication

• Fixed the inability to edit existing group replication task which occurred when there was insufficient free space on datastore detected. Now, the replication wizard is not blocked, despite the warning message, and you can still create and run this task (even though it may fail due to insufficient free space).

Application-aware backup

• Fixed improper detection of Exchange databases located on >2TB GPT volumes
• Fixed improper detection of Exchange 2003 SP2 installed on non-English Windows locale
• Fixed “Cannot read file as xml” error while backing up VM running SQL where x32 bit instance string is empty under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\Instance Names\SQL key

List of changes/fixes (compared with build 9.0.9767):

Changes

• Added “in product” purchase ability (you can purchase licenses from the product interface)
• Added new GUI element to track the trial period (bar on top of the web console)

List of changes/fixes (compared with build 8.0.8184):

Changes

• Added ability to back up and restore ESXi configurations of ESXi hosts running on flash drives. It is now possible to back up such configurations and restore them to flash drives. A new option is added to ESXi recovery wizard in bootable media for defining the drive where the ESXi system partitions will be created (previously, this selection was automatically made on the 1st local disk discovered)
• ESXi configuration recovery workflow now supports pure static IP environments. The static IP settings from the bootable media (where you run ESXi recovery wizard from) are passed to the automatically deployed virtual appliance on the restored ESXi host which performs the VMs recovery.
• Added ability to perform “Permanent Failover” operation with replica VM. “Permanent Failover” converts the replica VM into the base virtual machine. Acronis tags will be removed from the .vmx file and this virtual machine will no longer be considered as replica by Acronis Backup for VMware 9.
• Added a new backup option which allows you to re-try failed VM processing within the backup task.
• New Virtual Appliance deployments will have their disks extended. Previously, there were 2 disks created: 1GB and 2GB. Now the disks will be 1GB and 4GB respectively. This change will not affect upgraded Virtual Appliances (from 6/7/8 versions).
• The management of Online Backup subscriptions button has been moved under Configure -> Licenses button.
• The Actions -> Recovery button now contains multiple choices (VM recovery/File Recovery/etc.)
• Added an option to collect diagnostic information prior to contacting Acronis support. When you click Help -> Contact Support from the footer of the web console you will be prompted to collect diagnostic information.
• Added support for Microsoft Exchange 2013 – now it can be backed up with an application-aware option. The only supported recovery method is extraction of databases. There is no support for mailbox/e-mail recovery yet.

Common fixes:

• Fixed the issue which caused Virtual Appliance disk overflows and crashes due to increasing /var/log/messages.
• Significantly improved the formatting speed of large (>1TB) locally attached storages (LAS) attached to virtual appliances.
• Fixed the “Invalid identifier format” error which occurred when mounting (Run VM from Backup) a VM, including temporary VM mounting for Microsoft Exchange granular recovery

Backup/restore/validation

• Fixed the incorrect size of the archive in the 2nd destination when deduplication was disabled. The archive in the 2nd location appeared much greater in size than expected in these cases.
• Fixed File Recovery of a large amount of files (>35000). Previously, the .zip archive with the extracted files which resulted from File Recovery of a large amount of files could not be opened properly.
• Fixed the detection of specific disk/partitions layouts which were improperly skipped during backup. An example of such systems is Nexenta with RAID-Z setup.
• Fixed the various “Request result error” issues which occurred during backup to Acronis Cloud backup storage (Online Backup). Some of these errors have not been properly handled and this caused backup hanging.
• Fixed the occasional hanging of backups when there were 2 or more tasks running simultaneously.
• Fixed the backup failure to an SMB of some specific NAS devices, which could fail with the “Failed to mount SMB share” error.

Exchange support

• Fixed the problem which occurred when backing up Exchange in a mixed domain environment (with specific DNS lookup zone setup) that resulted in “An Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) error has occurred: . HRESULT: -2147016646; Extended error code: 0; Provider: 'LDAP Provider'.” error in the log file.

List of changes/fixes (compared with build 8.0.8128):

Changes

• Enabled hot-add functionality for vSphere 5.0+ environments in cases where vSphere Essentials or lesser VMware licenses are used. Now, LAN-free backup/replication is available for all types of vSphere licenses (5.0+) when using Virtual Appliance-based installation of Acronis vmProtect.
• Virtual Appliance now runs third-party custom VMware tools which support guest OS operations, i.e. you can now shutdown/reset/reboot/power off the Virtual Appliance through VMware tools scripts. This was previously unavailable. There is no longer a warning in the vSphere client about non-updated VMware tools.
• The warning about missing/outdated VMware tools has been moved to information trace. There will now be no warning in the log file when backing up or replicating a VM that does not have VMware tools.
• The 60 re-try limit has been removed and you can now adjust the number of retries up to 100,000 (Backup Options -> Error Handling).
• Added information about how many licenses are required for backup/replication of selected sets of VMs to the backup and the replication wizards if there are insufficient licenses.
• Added support for installation of Acronis vmProtect Windows Agent onto UEFI-based systems. In fact, this support is already present in the RTM build of Acronis vmProtect 8 and has been thoroughly tested by our QA team. Therefore, we can now support this type of installation.
• Added the ability to backup replica VMs. The “Show replicas” option is added to the 1st step of the backup wizard.

Common fixes:

• Fixed compatibility issue with Acronis Backup and Recovery 11.5. Now, you can install Acronis vmProtect Windows Agent onto a machine which has Acronis Backup and Recovery 11.5 (build 32308+) already installed.
• Added support for ESXi 5.1 configuration backup functionality. Now, you can backup ESXi 5.1 configurations.
• Significantly improved archive browsing algorithm (added caching mechanism). Now, loading the list of available recovery points in View -> Recovery Points or in restore/failback wizards is up to 20 times faster.
• Fixed the incorrect sorting of recovery points which occurred when recovery points were created by the 7th or 8th versions of Acronis vmProtect within the same archive. (Previously, the old recovery points were on top instead of the new ones.)

Backup/restore/validation

• Fixed the backup to Acronis Online Backup storage failure which occurred when there was more than 1 task backing up into the same account. This failure caused a conflict and the archives could not be created properly. In this scenario, the backup task started first could hang.
• Fixed the inability to back up into different Acronis Online Backup subscriptions under the same account when using 2 or more Acronis vmProtect Virtual Appliances with different activated subscriptions. Previously, backups from all Virtual Appliances were backing up into 1 subscription despite the fact that there were 2 or more subscriptions activated under one Acronis Online Backup account.
• Fixed the inability to back up all VMs from a selected ESX(i) host. This would occur, if the entire host was selected for backup in the backup wizard and the host contained VM templates. In this scenario, the backup could fail with “Instances list is empty” or “Failed to find registered virtual machines” errors.
• Fixed wrong time-stamps (1 hour difference) in e-mail notifications sent after backup/replication for specific time zones.
• Fixed the backup failure which occurred when the backed up VM had an empty ‘instanceUuid’ property in vSphere (rare case).
• Fixed the recovery warning about a non-restored network adapter. This occurred when the virtual network name where the backed up VM was connected to contained non-ASCII symbols. Now, such networks are properly restored.
• Fixed the incorrect virtual hardware version on the restored VM. Previously, when you restored a VM which had virtual hardware version 7 onto an ESXi 5.1 host, the restored VM had virtual hardware version 8.
• Fixed the inability to back up an ESXi configuration which occurred in cases that had a datastore with non-ASCII symbols in its name.

Replication

• Fixed the inability to create a new (or edit existing) replication task which occurred when there was insufficient free space on datastore detected. Now, the replication wizard is not blocked, despite the warning message, and you can still create and run this task (even though it may fail due to insufficient free space).

Exchange support

• Fixed excessively long e-mail browsing or mailbox recovery which occurred when there were several Exchange transaction logs during backup. Now, these logs are not rolled up and, therefore, do not affect the browsing/recovery speed.

Known issues

Installation

• Acronis Backup for VMware 9 Windows Agent cannot be installed on Windows Server 2012 in Server Core mode.

Backup/restore/Run VM from backup

• [ABV-4211] Cannot run a virtual machine from a backup if the virtual machine is replicated by using vSphere Replication.
• Virtual Machines which have a Linux guest OS based on LVM volumes are backed up in sector-by-sector mode. This means that recovery of this VM will allocate the entire virtual disk (even if it is a thin-provisioning type). File/folder recovery from such archives is not possible.
• When restoring an archive created by Acronis Backup and Recovery 10/11/11.5, there will be unexpected warning messages in the recovery log file. However, the restored VM will still be bootable and valid. The only issue is incorrect messages in the log file.

File recovery

• The sorting by filename in the 2nd step of the File recovery wizard (Explore Recovery Point) is case-sensitive.

Exchange support

• The following types and properties of Exchange items are not supported and, therefore, are not shown when browsing through Exchange database during recovery: “RSS feeds”, “Sync issues”.
• Exchange VMs hosted on ESX(i) 4.0 are not available for selection and for Exchange-aware backups, due to specific limitations of VSS support. Only 4.1 and 5.0 versions are supported for Exchange-aware backups.
• The self-extractible archive which is generated cannot be opened once it becomes larger than 2Gb; therefore, it is automatically split into 2GB chunks.

Replication

• After the replica VM is deleted from the, vmProtect Web Console, a folder on the datastore containing the test_meta.info file remains (it contains meta information about the replica VM). It is safe to delete this folder manually from the datastore.