vsphere Agent Version

Transcription

1 vsphere Agent Version Release Notes, December 05, 2012

2 vsphere Agent Version Release Notes, December 5, 2012 ====================================================================== CONTENTS 1 OVERVIEW 1.1 Release History 1.2 Supported Platforms/VMware Infrastructure 1.3 Supported Systems for File and Folder Recovery 2 NEW FEATURES 3 INSTALLATION NOTES 3.1 Installation Requirements 3.2 Conditional Requirements 3.3 Licensing Requirements 3.4 Install/Upgrade 4 FIXES and KNOWN ISSUES 4.1 Fixes 4.2 Known Issues 5 PRODUCT SUPPORT 5.1 Technical Support 5.2 Product Updates 5.3 Documentation

3 ====================================================================== 1 OVERVIEW This document contains release notes for vsphere Agent This Agent provides recovery protection for VMware vsphere environments without requiring the ESX Service Console. A single vsphere Agent can support a vcenter Server with as many as 1000 VMs; you do not have to install the Agent or other software on each VM you want to back up. The Agent supports granular file restores. This allows you to select and restore specific files and folders from a VM, rather than restoring an entire VM or individual virtual disks (VMDKs). The Agent is pre-installed in a VM and provided in OVA format. Control and configuration of your backups and restores is done through Agent Console or Web Agent Console in much the same manner as other Agents. The vsphere Agent allows you to back up your VMs to a secure, remote vault. 1.1 Release History Version , December 5, 2012, Fourth release Version , October 16, 2012, Third release Version , September 24, 2012, Second release Version , August 8, 2012, First release 1.2 Supported Platforms/VMware Infrastructure vsphere ESX and ESXi hosts: - ESXi ESXi 5.0 (up to update 1) - ESXi 4.1 (up to update 3) - ESX 4.1 (up to update 2) - ESXi 4.0 (updates 3 and 4) - ESX 4.0 (updates 3 and 4) vsphere vcenter Servers: - vcenter Server vcenter Server 5.1 Linux Appliance - vcenter Server 5.0 (up to update 1) - vcenter Server 4.1 (up to update 3) - vcenter Server 4.0 (updates 3 and 4) 1.3 Supported Systems for File and Folder Recovery For file and folder recovery, the vsphere Agent currently supports the following operating systems and file systems.

4 Windows: - NTFS - FAT - FAT32 - Dynamic disks Note: GPT partitions are not supported for file and folder recovery. Linux: - ext3 - ext4

5 ======================================================================= 2 NEW FEATURES 2.1 New Features in version 7.10 The vsphere Agent now supports vsphere version 5.1, including the following features: - vcenter Single Sign-On server. vsphere Agent 7.10 can authenticate with a vcenter Single Sign-On server configured with multiple Active Directory domains. - Hardware version 9. vsphere Agent 7.10 can back up and restore VMs that are running hardware version 9. - vcenter Server Appliance. vsphere Agent 7.10 can back up and restore VMs in a vcenter that is managed by the vcenter Server Appliance. - vsphere 5.1 vmotion. vsphere Agent 7.10 can back up VMs that have been migrated to another host. 2.2 New Features in version 7.00 The vsphere Agent now supports granular file and folder recovery. This allows you to restore specific files and folders from a VM backup, rather than restoring an entire VM or VMDK. For example, you can restore individual files from a My Documents folder (or even the entire My Documents folder) instead of restoring the entire VM or VMDK where the folder resides. For granular file and folder recovery, vsphere Agent version 7.00 or later and Vault version 7.00 or later are required. If you use a Vault version earlier than 7.00, you cannot restore specific files or folders. Files and folders can be restored from safesets that were created using vsphere Agent version 6.90 or later and version 6.x vaults, but only after both the Agent and Vault are upgraded to version 7.00 or later. To restore VMs and VMDKs, you can use vault version 6.22 or later. To ensure successful backups and restores in N:1 replicated environments, the Vault must be version 6.31 or later (or version 6.22 with a hot fix obtained from your service provider). Note: Users do not have to enter credentials to access files on a VMDK that has been shared. You can limit the amount of time that a VMDK is shared using an Idle time option. However, if you have security concerns, do not perform file and folder restores; restore entire VMs or VMDKs instead. Note: vsphere Agent 7.10 backs up VMs with VMDKs as large as 2032 GB GB is the maximum VMDK size recommended by VMware to allow sufficient overhead for snapshots, and snapshots are required for vsphere Agent backups. If a backup job includes a VM with a VMDK that is larger than 2032 GB, the VM is skipped during the backup.

6 ======================================================================= 3 INSTALLATION NOTES 3.1 Installation Requirements Hardware ******** See the VMware website for supported and recommended hardware platforms. Ensure that the vcenter has sufficient resources, including CPU and memory, for the vsphere Agent and all VMs in your vcenter. Ensure that the vcenter configuration follows VMware recommendations and best practices. Software ******** - VMware vsphere version VMware vsphere version 5.0 (up to update 1) - VMware vsphere version 4.1 (up to update 2) - VMware vsphere version 4.0 (update 3 or 4) Note: Using Microsoft SQL Server Express for the vcenter Server database or the internal database used by vcenter virtual appliance is not recommended. - Agent Console version Web Agent Console version For granular file and folder restores, vsphere Agent version 7.00 or later and Vault version 7.00 or later are required. Files and folders can be restored from safesets that were created using vsphere Agent version 6.90 or later and version 6.x Vaults, but only after both the Agent and Vault are upgraded to version 7.00 or later. For VM and VMDK restores, you can use Vault version 6.22 or later. To ensure successful backups and restores in N:1 replicated environments, the Vault must be version 6.31 or later (or version 6.22 with a hot fix obtained from your service provider). 3.2 Conditional Requirements A user ID with full Administrator rights is required for backups and restores. VMware plug-in versions earlier than 6.90 cannot exist in the same environment as the vsphere Agent. For file and folder restores on Linux platforms, you must install the Samba client in order to mount shared virtual disks (VMDKs). Samba is an installable option with some Linux distributions. You can also visit to download the open-source software. Note: Backups of physical Raw Disk Mappings (RDMs) are not supported with vsphere Agent. VMware does not allow snapshots of physical RDMs, and snapshots are required for vsphere Agent backups. To back up a

7 physical RDM, you must install an Agent in the VM with the physical RDM. Virtual RDMs are protected, and are restored as VMDKs on supported datastores. 3.3 Licensing Requirements In Vault versions 6.22 and later, the vsphere Agent claims at least three licenses from the Vault. A Server Agent license and a VMware plug-in license is required for each vsphere Agent. A VMware Cluster license (called ESXFarm ) is required for each hypervisor host in the environment. For example, in a vcenter with 15 VM hypervisors (ESX/ESXi hosts), the vsphere Agent claims 15 Cluster licenses, one ESX license and one Server Agent license. 3.4 Install/Upgrade Install The vsphere Agent is pre-installed in a VM, and provided in Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA) format. You must deploy the OVA file in the vcenter where you want to back up VMs. The OVA file name is: vsphereagent ova To obtain the OVA file, contact your service provider. The vsphere Agent is installed on a Linux VM, and deployed with the following RPMs: agent-combined noarch.rpm compat-libstdc i386.rpm createrepo fc9.noarch.rpm e2fsprogs i386.rpm e2fsprogs-libs i386.rpm EVLT-vmware-appliance-agent i386.rpm fontconfig fc9.i386.rpm freetype fc9.i386.rpm iscsi-initiator-utils fc9.i386.rpm jre-6u26-linux-i586.rpm ksh fc9.i386.rpm libice fc9.i386.rpm libsm fc9.i386.rpm libtdb fc9.i386.rpm libx fc9.i386.rpm libxau fc9.i386.rpm libxcb fc9.i386.rpm libxdmcp fc9.i386.rpm libxext fc9.i386.rpm libxft fc9.i386.rpm libxml2-python fc9.i386.rpm libxmu fc9.i386.rpm libxp fc9.i386.rpm libxrender fc9.i386.rpm

8 libxt fc9.i386.rpm ntfs-3g fc9.i386.rpm openmotif fc9.i386.rpm pancetera-tools i386.rpm pancetera-unite i386.rpm pyopenssl fc9.i386.rpm rsync fc9.i386.rpm samba fc9.i386.rpm samba-client fc9.i386.rpm samba-common fc9.i386.rpm samba-winbind fc9.i386.rpm vmware-appliance i386.rpm vmware-appliance-buagent i386.rpm vmware-appliance-languages i386.rpm vmware-appliance-thirdparty i386.rpm vmware-appliance-vsphere-plugin i386.rpm vmware-appliance-vv i386.rpm vmware-appliance-vvagent i386.rpm vmware-recovery-appliance i386.rpm xorg-x11-filesystem fc9.noarch.rpm For deployment and configuration information, see the vsphere Agent User Guide. To restore files and folders from VMDKs that are Windows dynamic disks, you must install a separate Dynamic Disk Tool that is provided with the vsphere Agent. The Dynamic Disk tool is the preferred way to access files and folders on shared VM backups. To install the Dynamic Disk tool, run this executable file: DynamicDiskTool exe For more information about the Dynamic Disk Tool, see the vsphere Agent User Guide and Dynamic Disk Tool release notes Upgrade IMPORTANT: vsphere Agent version 7.10 includes a fix for an issue with backing up VMDKs that are larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB. When you perform a backup after upgrading vsphere version 7.00 or earlier to vsphere Agent 7.10, vsphere Agent 7.10 detects any VMs with VMDKs larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB, and ensures that they are backed up correctly. For more information, see Section of these release notes. If you upgrade the vsphere Agent, some or all of the RPMs are updated. When you upgrade the Agent, settings such as vcenter registration and Web Agent Console credentials are preserved. With Internet access, you can upgrade the vsphere Agent by entering the "system upgrade" command in the Agent CLI. If direct Internet access is not available, you can download RPMs from your service provider, create a CIFS share, and upgrade the vsphere Agent locally using the "system upgrade manual" command. For more information, see the vsphere Agent User Guide.

9 RPMs are available from your service provider in a.zip file named: vsphereagent rpms.zip When you upgrade Agent 6.91 for VMware to vsphere Agent 7.10, the tmpfs setting for the Agent VM is increased. This increase enables the Agent to support as many as 1000 VMs managed by a vcenter Server. Previous versions of the Agent supported as many as 250 VMs in a vcenter.

10 ======================================================================= 4 FIXES and KNOWN ISSUES 4.1 Fixes Fixes in 7.10 release If you restore a VM to a datastore that is shared by the ESXi host where the vsphere Agent is running and the host where you are restoring the VM, data is now written directly from the vsphere Agent's ESXi host to the destination datastore. Previously, data was sent from the vsphere Agent's ESXi host to the destination host before it was written to the shared datastore. (23646) Fixes in 7.02 release If a Satellite vault was unavailable and the vsphere Agent tried to register to a Base vault, synchronization succeeded but the following error appeared when you tried to restore data: "An unexpected error occurred during information loading". This problem no longer occurs. (23653) Fixes in 7.01 release An issue with backing up VMDKs larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB (1,073,741,823 KB) has been fixed. In Agent for VMware 6.9x, backups of VMs with VMDKs larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB appeared to complete successfully, but data corruption occurred in VMDKs larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB. As a workaround, vsphere Agent 7.00 skipped a VM in a backup if it included a VMDK larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB. To ensure that VMDKs larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB are backed up correctly, upgrade to vsphere Agent version 7.01 or later and run existing backup jobs. NOTE: VMs that were backed up using an Agent version earlier than 7.01 and contain VMDKs larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB should not be restored. After an upgrade, vsphere Agent version 7.01 or later seeds backups for VMs with VMDKs larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB that were skipped during backups with vsphere Agent (23610/23385/23373) Previously, the vsphere Agent could only support as many as 250 VMs managed by a vcenter Server. The Agent can now support as many as 1000 VMs in a vcenter because the tmpfs setting for the Agent VM has been increased. (23344) Restores to original location no longer disconnect and become inactive without completing. (23486) Previously, new vcenters sometimes failed to communicate with new vsphere Agents that were reregistered with the vault. This no longer occurs. (22750)

11 4.1.4 Fixes in release After failover to a Passive vault, restore from another computer failed. Backups ran successfully to the new Active vault (previously Passive). However, attempts to create new jobs did not use the alternate vault information. (23392/22798) When you tried to restore a VM to a host that does not support a virtual device in the VM, the VM could not be registered to the host. VMs with unsupported devices are now restored without the unsupported devices. (23265) On localized languages other than English, VMDKs were sometimes deleted when a VM or VMDK restore was nearing completion. (22958) For old, large backups, recoveries sometimes failed, and the Agent indicated that there was nothing to restore. (22734) In some cases, the Agent created an empty support bundle. (22651) Very large backups with very large catalogs sometimes failed due to space constraints. To ensure sufficient room for catalog and delta files, the vsphere Agent VM partition that contains Agent files is significantly larger in version 7.0 than in previous versions. (22480) In previous versions, successful recoveries sometimes appeared to place the Agent in a stopped state. (22432/22004) In previous versions, backups sometimes failed, indicating "Thread synchronization error" and "Unable to create semaphore" in the log. (22362) In rare cases, a snapshot became locked. This caused the next backup to fail. (22312) In previous versions, a VMDK restore of a single VMDK required the same amount of space as the entire original VM. It failed if there was less space than on the original, whether or not the single VMDK was smaller than the available space. (22265) In previous versions, when a VM contained a physical RDM disk in a multi-vmdk configuration, the backup skipped the physical RDM, but restored partially. Upon restore, all of the non-physical RDM VMDKs were restored correctly. However, as there was a missing VMDK, generation of the.vmx file failed. (22260) 4.2 Known Issues Backup Issues In vcenter 4.1, you cannot back up VMs with physical RDMs that are connected to IDE nodes. This problem does not occur for VMs with physical RDMs that are connected to SCSi nodes. (23308)

12 Backups of large, highly fragmented VMs can sometimes fail due to segmentation faults. (22816) When you back up a VM that contains an independent disk or physical RDM, an error message appears in the backup log for each independent disk and physical RDM. Because independent disks and physical RDMs cannot be backed up, the VM backup is incomplete. You cannot restore the entire VM from the backup. However, you can restore VMDKs that are not independent disks or physical RDMs, and files and folders from these VMDKs. (23046) If you run a backup, then rename the item you backed up and back it up right away, that backup might fail. The discovery process could be as long as 20 minutes before the backup can be run again. (21936) When attempting to back up a job to an alternate vault location (mount point on the vsphere Agent), that backup job will wait for other backup jobs to complete. (21876) CBT cannot be set or enabled for suspended VMs. If CBT is already set (enabled), CBT will be used, even if the VM is suspended. VMs that are powered ON or OFF do not have this issue. (21846) The Safeset Properties Original Size value shown for a vsphere job is displaying the size of the VM as though it is thick provisioned even when the VM is thin provisioned. (21604) References to Quick File Scanning (QFS) sometimes appear in the logs. These messages can be ignored because QFS is disabled globally by the vsphere Agent. (22989) vsphere Agents are not prevented or protected from performing concurrent backups of the same VM from the same vsphere Agent or another vsphere Agent. Avoid running concurrent backups of the same VM or job from the same vsphere Agent or another vsphere Agent. This can cause unfavorable CBT results and put delta backups out of sync. (21659) Restore Issues If you restore a VMDK larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB from a safeset that was created using Version 6.91 or 6.90 Agent for VMware, data corruption might occur. WORKAROUND: To ensure that VMDKs larger than 1 TB minus 1 KB are successfully backed up, run the backup jobs using vsphere Agent version 7.01 or later. (23385/23373) If there is insufficient space for restoring a VM or VMDK on the original or alternate datastore, the restore appears to continue but the data is not restored. WORKAROUND: Restore VMs and VMDKs to datastores with sufficient space. (23379) If a new file is created just before a VM is backed up (e.g., one minute before the backup), the file might be corrupted when the VM is

13 restored. (23208) If the original datastore of a VM is no longer present, the restore log indicates it is restoring to original location but restores to an alternate datastore. (22233) In a restore, each VM and VMDK is restored to a separate folder on a datastore: one for each VMX file, and one for each VMDK file. The first folder created has the specified name. "_X" is appended to the name for each subsequent folder, where X is a sequential number starting at 1. (23561/21952) Thick Provisioned Eager Zeroed hard disks are restored as Thick Provisioned Lazy Zeroed. (21432) When you restore VMs that resided in custom folders, they are sometimes restored to the main level instead of their original custom folders. (21241) File and Folder Restore Issues When you share a VMDK from a VM backup that contains a large basic disk, the resulting UNC path is not always complete. WORKAROUND: Paste the UNC path into the Dynamic Disk Tool. You can then access all data from the VM. (23397) If you terminate a share when performing a file and folder restore, leftover directories remain in /opt/share. WORKAROUND: Reboot the vsphere Agent to remove the leftover directories. (23118) To prevent problems with file and folder restores, the minimum bandwidth usage value for the Agent is now 1500 kilobits per second. If bandwidth throttling is set for the Agent, the total bandwidth available is divided by the number of file and folder restores you are running. Reduced bandwidth can cause delays in opening the Dynamic Disk Tool and mounting VMDKs, and could cause the Dynamic Disk Tool to crash. (23057) If you terminate a share when doing a file and folder restore and then try to perform another file and folder restore, an incorrect UNC path with no files appears. After terminating a share, you must restart the vsphere Agent before you can perform another file and folder restore. (23053) On Linux platforms, file and folder restores are supported on LVM2 volumes that do not span multiple virtual disks. File and folder restores do not work with LVM2 volumes that span multiple virtual disks. (23196) notifications are not provided for file and folder restores. (22842) Some versions of Linux do not have correct default settings for interpreting special characters over a mounted shared drive. When mounting a share on Linux, files and folders with non-ascii characters

14 might be inaccessible or have different names. WORKAROUND: Specify the character encoding when mounting a share. For example, when mounting a VRA with utf8 encoding, include "iocharset=utf8" in the mount command. (23214) Snapshot Issues Sometimes snapshot files are left behind, consuming space on the logical disk. (22557) If a snapshot from a previous backup fails or if a backup is terminated before snapshot creation has completed, the subsequent backup does not perform a snapshot and will fail. Recommendation: Do not manually remove the orphaned snapshot. WORKAROUND: Reboot the vsphere Agent. Upon reboot, the Agent will remove the orphaned snapshot. (21839/21632) CBT is not enabled if the VM contains a user level snapshot for the initial backup. An incorrect indication is given that CBT is enabled for the VM backup. WORKAROUND: The snapshot must be removed before CBT can be enabled. (21739) Communication Issues If replication between vaults is configured using host names instead of IP addresses, and the vsphere Agent cannot resolve host names, the Agent cannot register or back up to a Base or Passive vault. The log does not indicate that the problem is related to host name resolution. WORKAROUND: Configure replication using vault IP addresses instead of host names, or ensure that the vsphere Agent can resolve host names using DNS or static entries. (23730) If you replace a vsphere Agent's virtual network card or assign a different MAC address, the Agent does not recognize the virtual network card after a reboot. WORKAROUND: In the Agent Setup interface, select Network Reset. The Agent then recognizes the new virtual network card and assigns an IP Address or can be configured to use static IP. (24053) The vsphere Agent can fail to connect to Agent Console if system default proxy settings set in Internet Explorer prevent Agent Console from communicating with the vsphere Agent and obtaining the SSL certificate. WORKAROUND: On the computer where Agent Console is running, disable proxy settings in Internet Explorer. (23231) When performing a reregistration to the vault, if you had other vaults previously created, information on the vcenter tab in Agent Configuration is removed. When the vcenter tab is empty, the synch operation fails to complete. WORKAROUND: Populate the vcenter tab in order for Synchronize to recover the delta information. (22028)

15 4.2.6 Naming Issues If you create folders under the "VM and Templates" view (blue folders), you can create multiple VMs with the same name. You can see all of these VMs through Agent Console. However, when you try to back up VMs with the same name, the only backup that succeeds is the one for the VM in the root folder. The other backups fail because the vsphere Agent cannot find the VMs. WORKAROUND: Rename VMs so that each has a unique name. (21900) When the vsphere Agent host name is longer than 20 characters, backups fail with "Validation failed: failed to validate computer". The vsphere Agent host name must be restricted to a maximum 20 characters. (22388) VM names with special characters may display differently in the backup structure versus the restore structure. Upon restore, the log might indicate that the VM has been renamed, and also that the created datastore folder name is incorrect. However, in VMware, the name of the restored VM appears correctly. (22281) In vcenter 5, the following characters cannot be used and are not supported for VM names: # { } (21974/21415) If you have a VM named VM*, and you create a filter using the asterisk as in VM*, the filter does not back up all VMs starting with VM as expected, but backs up only the one VM whose name is VM*. (21418) When multiple.vmdk files of the same name are selected for restore, only one.vmdk is restored. WORKAROUND: Restore individual.vmdk files one at a time. (21791) When you try to change the vsphere Agent host name, the following warning sometimes appears: "This node is a group master. Changing the hostname may break the group communication." You can ignore this warning and continue to change the Agent host name. Changing the Agent host name does not result in any problems. (23289) When you create a support bundle, the destination directory cannot include spaces. (24105)

16 ======================================================================= 5 PRODUCT SUPPORT 5.1 Technical Support For technical support, please contact your service provider. 5.2 Product Updates Product updates are available from your service provider. 5.3 Documentation The available documentation for the vsphere Agent is: vsphere Agent User Guide vsphere Agent Quick Start Guide vsphereagent.txt (this document) DynamicDiskTool.txt (release notes for the Dynamic Disk Tool) All documentation is available from your service provider. ========================================================================

17 InTechnology Head Office Central House Beckwith Knowle Harrogate HG3 1UG InTechnology Reading Commensus House 3-5 Worton Drive Reading RG2 0TG Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44 (0) Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44 (0) Certificate No. FS Certificate No. IS