Zerto Virtual Replication Release Notes Version 3.5 Update 7

Transcription

1 Zerto Virtual Replication Release Notes Version 3.5 Update 7 ZVR-RN-3.5U

2 Copyright 2015, Zerto Ltd. All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Zerto Ltd. Zerto Ltd. does not assume responsibility for any printing errors that may appear in this document. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval systems, for any purpose other than the purchaser's personal use, without the prior written permission of Zerto Ltd. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. ZVR-RN-3.5U

3 Zerto Virtual Replication provides a business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) solution in a virtual environment, enabling the replication of mission-critical applications and data as quickly as possible and with minimal data loss. When devising a recovery plan, these two objectives, minimum time to recover and maximum data to recover, are assigned target values: the recovery time objective (RTO) and the recovery point objective (RPO). Zerto Virtual Replication enables a virtual-aware recovery with low values for both the RTO and RPO. In addition, Zerto Virtual Replication enables protecting virtual machines for extended, longer term, recovery from an offsite backup. Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 builds on the advancements of version 3.1 and continues to centralize and simplify management. In this release, Zerto have introduced a new paradigm in backup technology, enabling long term retention of protected virtual machines. The operational workflows available in version 3.1 have been extended to include better alert handling, action APIs in addition to the status APIs and a number of user interface improvements to make Zerto Virtual Replication easier to use. Note: When upgrading to the new version, any changes made to tweaks.txt are preserved in the upgraded version. The following updates are described: Release Notes For 3.5 Update 7 Release Notes For 3.5 Update 6 Release Notes For 3.5 Update 5 Release Notes For 3.5 Update 4 Release Notes For 3.5 Update 3 Release Notes For 3.5 Update 2 Release Notes For 3.5 Update 1 New Features Introduced in Zerto Virtual Replication 3.5 Known Issues Release Notes For 3.5 Update 7 This section describes the Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 7 release. Support for vsphere version 6.0. Changing the host password for more than one VRA at the same time is supported. The password must be able to be changed for all the selected VRAs, or the option, Change Host Password, under Actions in the VRAs tab under the Setup tab is disabled. The service profile name and ID are returned when running an API to retrieve VPG information (/v1/vpgs). You can perform a silent installation of Zerto Virtual Replication, running Zerto Virtual Replication Installer.exe -s, after setting the following environment variables: ZertoAutomation_Username Optional. When using a specific account as the user account to run the Zerto Virtual Manager service, the name for the account. ZertoAutomation_Password Optional. A valid password for the given user account. ZertoAutomation_DbServer Optional. The external database domain name and server instance to connect to, with the format domain\instance. ZertoAutomation_DbUsername Optional. The user name for the SQL Server database. ZertoAutomation_DbPassword Optional. A valid password for the given SQL Server database user name. ZertoAutomation_SiteName The name used to identify the site. This name is displayed in the Zerto User Interface. ZertoAutomation_Contact Who to contact if a need arises, such as a phone number or address. ZertoAutomation_VcenterIP The IP address or host name of the machine where the vcenter Server runs. ZertoAutomation_vcUsername The username to access the vcenter Server ZertoAutomation_vcPassword The password to access the vcenter Server ZertoAutomation_VCDIP Optional. The IP address or host name of the machine where vcd runs. When connecting to vcd with multiple cells, enter the virtual IP for the network load balancing used by the cells. 3

4 ZertoAutomation_vcdUsername Optional. The username to access vcloud Director ZertoAutomation_vcdPassword Optional. The password to access vcloud Director ZertoAutomation_vcdMQUsername Optional. The username to access AMQP, when using vcloud Director ZertoAutomation_vcdMQPassword Optional. The password to access AMQP, when using vcloud Director As with previous releases Zerto continues to improve scaling, including: Better handling of changes to many VPGs in tandem. Better handling of the Zerto Virtual Manager database cleanup, for example cleaning up multiple events after they have expired. The time taken to update the RPO in the user interface in large environments has been significantly reduced. Issues Resolved in 3.5 Update 7 The following issues have been resolved in this version. The Zerto Virtual Manager is more resilient to external problems and issues an exception instead of crashing. For example, virtual machines that have no MAC address and unknown network types caused the Zerto Virtual Manager to crash. Failed communication between Zerto Virtual Managers is now handled by issuing an exception and not resynchronizing the data in both Zerto Virtual Manager from scratch. Recovery of a virtual machine with 15 or more disks, each with the same name on the protected site, for example when each disk is on a different datasource, failed. Setting guest customization for virtual machines in a VPG was sometimes ignored. The following issues in Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 6 have been fixed: CPU usage increased to 97% on the source Zerto Virtual Manager. In Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 6 you needed to set the All filter in the Events tab under the Alerts and Events tab to see the list of events. In Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 6 when failing over a VPG, the VPG entry in the VPG list disappeared for a few seconds between the committing task and the promoting task. The installation calculates the available free space and issues a warning message if there is not enough free space. Release Notes For 3.5 Update 6 This section describes the Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 6 release. The status of a failover test is returned when running an API to retrieve VPG information (/v1/vpgs). When retrieving information about all VPGs or a specific VPG, the following has been added to the response (shown in JSON): "ActiveProcessesApi":{ "RunningFailOverTestApi":{ "Stage":"String content" } }, Where: ActiveProcessApi The current stage of a operation being performed on the VPG. RunningFailoverTestApi The operation being performed. Stage The stage of the running operation: InTest The VPG is in a failover test operation. Starting The VPG virtual machines in the recovery site are being initialized for a failover test. Stopping The recovery site is being cleaned up after a failover test of the VPG. Using Microsoft SQL Server as the Zerto Virtual Manager database requires 20GB free space to accommodate the database and the logs generated by the Zerto Virtual Manager, for both an install and upgrade. You can change the VNIC IP for virtual machines with VMware Tools running for Oracle Linux versions 5.9 and 6.6. Improvements to performance when using an external, Microsoft SQL Server database. 4

5 Scaling improvements, including: Better handling of a large number of sites, for example, when collecting logs or exporting a VPG list to CSV or importing VPG XML definitions, there are no timeout issues. Better handling of a large number of failover tests performed at the same time. Better handling of checkpoints for many VPGs and VMs at the same time. Editing a VPG is now possible during VPG synchronization. Memory usage of the Zerto Virtual Manager when writing to storage has been improved. After restarting the Zerto Virtual Manager service, the journal history of all of VPGs started accumulating checkpoints based on the time of the Zerto Virtual Manager service restart. Storage profiles are retrieved using a vcenter Server mechanism instead of a vcloud Director mechanism, enabling the retrieval of more than 128 storage profiles. Issues Resolved in 3.5 Update 6 The following issues have been resolved in this version. The user who initiated an API was not included in the Events log. Response time when using vcloud Director to recover VPGs has been improved. If test vcd vapps cannot be shut down and removed when stopping a failover test, the procedure failed. It now completes and a message is issued that some test vcd vapps need to be manually cleaned up. Also if the vcd vapps are manually removed in the middle of a test, the procedure failed. Importing an XML configuration file for a VPG timed out after only a few minutes. TheZerto Virtual Manager crashed in a loop when using Microsoft SQL Server and the SQL Server had no free space. Release Notes For 3.5 Update 5 This section describes the Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 5 release. Out-of-the box support for vsphere 5.1U3. Note: All versions of Zerto Virtual Replication from version 3.1 will also support vsphere 5.1U3 when connected to the Zerto CallHome server or via a manual update coordinated with Zerto support. If a virtual machine has multiple NICs but is configured to only have a single default gateway a dialog is displayed in the Zerto User Interface informing the user to enter for the Default gateway field for each NIC with no default gateway. Due to a bug in VMware vcloud Director, VPGs that include VMs running Windows 2003 operating system drop their domains when guest customization is enabled. The user is now informed of this in an alert. Scaling and performance has been improved with Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 5, including the following optimizations: The speed to open the dialog to edit a VPG. The speed to generate the resource report. The speed to refresh the list of checkpoints. The speed to stop a failover test for VPGs with more than 20 virtual machines. Updating an external database used with the Zerto Virtual Manager. Pairing multiple sites and specifically more than 40 sites. Freeing up memory. Issues Resolved in 3.5 Update 5 The following issues have been resolved in this version. Recovery operations failed for virtual machines with VMDKs named with more than one.vmdk, for example, mvd.vm.cldprd0sys0025/prd0sys0025.vmdk_5.vmdk. When using an SQL Server database for the Zerto Virtual Manager, the object used to insert checkpoints could be added more than once, corrupting the database and causing the Zerto Virtual Manager to crash. In a multi-site environment, stopping the Zerto Virtual Manager service can take too long, causing an exception. 5

6 Recovery operations fail if vcloud Director s absolute session timeout expired during the recovery operation. Sorting the Alerts tab by Severity and then by another column resulted in not being able to sort the display again by the severity. Long synchronizations sometimes resulted in the Zerto Virtual Managers being disconnected, causing error in the log until they reconnected. The Zerto User Interface did not display the login screen when the Zerto Virtual Manager was not connected to the vcenter Server. Starting with Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 1, disks marked as swap disks were replicated as normal disks and not as swap disks. Changing the target host of a protected virtual machine after a second journal volume was created for the virtual machine sometimes resulted in the VPG not meeting the SLA. Reconnecting to a Zerto Cloud Connector or an ESX/ESXi host after multiple losses of the connection Zerto Virtual Manager machine to exhaust all of its resources. When failing over multiple VPGs without reverse protection, trying to edit the VPGS to enable protection after the failover to change the state from Needs Configuration, failed after editing some of the VPGs. When generating a checkpoint using the Zerto Virtual Replication VSS agent, VSS writers are put into a failed state resulting in a need to reboot the guest virtual machine. The cookie used by the Zerto Self-service Portal user interface is now RFC-compliant. Release Notes For 3.5 Update 4 This section describes the Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 4 release. Zerto determined that VRA and Zerto Cloud Connectors run versions of Linux that are affected by the recent Bash vulnerability (Shellshock). Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 4 release closes this security vulnerability. After installing Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 4, upgrade all the VRAs and redeploy all Zerto Cloud Connectors. Note: VRAs and Zerto Cloud Connectors are single-user systems with no external-facing services that allow users to manipulate environment variables. Zerto Cloud Connectors are always installed with static IPs and Zerto recommends installing VRAs with static IPs. Zerto is not aware of any exploitable attack vectors against Zerto Cloud Connectors and VRAs with static IPs and Zerto believes that only VRAs installed with DHCP could be compromised. Out-of-the box support for vsphere 5.5U2. Note: Older versions of Zerto Virtual Replication will also support vsphere 5.5U2 when connected to the Zerto CallHome server or via a manual update coordinated with Zerto support. Issues Resolved in 3.5 Update 4 The following issues have been resolved in this version. During the upgrade of Zerto Virtual Replication, the CloudLogo.png file used in the Zerto Self-service Portal was overwritten and replaced with the Zerto graphic. A non-fips security compliance algorithm on the machine where Zerto Virtual Replication is being installed, caused the installation to fail. Changing the VRA RAM down to 1GB caused the Zerto Virtual Manager service to stop running. Changing a host ID caused the Zerto Virtual Manager service to stop running. The Zerto Virtual Manager service stopped randomly when both user initiated log cleanups were performed at the same time that the Zerto Virtual Manager was cleaning up unused disks, for example, after a failover test. The Zerto Virtual Manager did not prevent duplicate entries to the database causing the service to stop running. Zerto Virtual Manager crashed when trying to handle fields with more than 255 characters, such as datastore names or when collecting logs using the Zerto Diagnostics Utility with strings greater than 255 characters. Restarting a Zerto Virtual Manager during a WAN disconnection caused any recovery operation to fail. Uninstalling a VRA by shutting down the VRA before uninstalling it, caused VPGs using the VRA to stop functioning. When a VRA is configured with 1GB RAM, during promotion of a large amount of data the promotion could hang. The CPU usage for a VRA was incorrectly reported. 6

7 VRA disconnections occurred with amounts of data over 1TB being protected during bitmap syncs. The failover test procedure was made more efficient, speeding up the time to set up the test. With vsphere 5.5, you could not recover a virtual machine using VMware Hardware Version 10 that has a CD-ROM attached. During recovery to a DVS network, when connecting a virtual machine to a dvportgroup the MoRef was used and not the dvportgroup key. When a change to the vcenter or vcd occurs such as adding a storage profile at the same time that a recovery operation is performed, the commit of the recovery operation could fail and need to be recommitted after a few seconds. When the journal and recovery virtual machine used different datastores, Storage vmotioning a datastore can cause the VPG to hang. Recovering to vcd sometimes caused one or more recovered virtual machines to become corrupted when the virtual machine included VMTools, as it was rebooted more than once with guest customization on different hosts. Running Zerto Virtual Replication cmdlets for extended periods sometimes required restarting Zerto Virtual Manager. The API issued an error when NULLs were returned for some of the values. The Zerto Virtual Manager API did not return events related to alerts. A cloud site saw a disconnection whereas the customer saw that the VPGs were being protected. Frequent and bitmap syncs were triggered by recovery storage and network congestion. Reclaiming unused space on a journal volume was not always performed resulting in the journal becoming full. Logs could not be collected when the company name specified at the beginning of the log collection included a space at the end of the name. After opening some tabs in the Zerto Cloud Manager and then closing the browser, the memory reservation of the browser was not released. The How-To-Guide was always displayed on access to the Zerto User Interface. Release Notes For 3.5 Update 3 This section describes the Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 3 release. New Features in 3.5 Update 3 This section describes the Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 3 release new features. Compression of offsite backups. Saving the backups requires disk space and the more regularly backups are created, the more space is required to store them. The compression option enables compressing backups stored in the repository, using zip, set to level six. Note: For better compression, which requires more CPU, or less compression to reduce the CPU overhead, contact Zerto support. Whether compression is enabled for a repository or backup is displayed in the Zerto User Interface, in the Repositories tab and Restore VPG wizard. In addition to the compression provided by Zerto, a document is available describing how to use Windows Server 2012 R2 built-in deduplication. Using Zerto Virtual Replication offsite backups with Windows Server 2012 deduplication provides a software-only combination for a powerful data archiving solution. This solution allows for a relatively low-cost replacement of the more expensive hardware deduplication and archival systems and is more consistent with a Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) 1 approach. According to Microsoft, the expected savings depend on the use case. As shown in the table below, the disk savings can be significant. 2 Scenario Content Typical Space Savings User documents Documents, photos, music, videos 30-50% Deployment shares Software binaries, cab files, symbols files 70-80% 1. Software-Defined Data Center 7

8 Scenario Content Typical Space Savings Virtualization libraries Virtual hard disk files 80-95% General file share All of the above 50-60% The description of an offsite backup event, EV0060 has been improved to include the job duration and the size of the backup saved in the repository. New API to retrieve local site information. The localsite API enables retrieving local site information such as the site identifier and information defined in the Site Information dialog and whether virtual machines can be in the site can be protected to the same site. The URI: Where: zvm_ip The IP address of the Zerto Virtual Manager where the API is run. port The port to access the Zerto Virtual Manager. The default port is Logs from the VBA are collected by the Zerto Virtual Replication Diagnostics utility. Log archiving tool available. If you need to save logs for an extended period, you can use the Zerto Log Archiver to create an archive of the logs for a specified period. As well as being able to save logs for an extended period, these logs are not overwritten when the normal log mechanism reaches its size limit. Issues Resolved in 3.5 Update 3 When upgrading from Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.1, if for any reason the Zerto Virtual Manager service could not restart at the end of the upgrade, the upgrade rolled back and resulted in a re-install being required. During an upgrade the following files were not preserved: users.txt, tweaks.txt and the security certificate, zvm.pfx. When a boot order was defined for a VPG, editing the VPG to change the datastore for a virtual machine recovery volume or journal could not be saved. When replicating to vcd, removing a NIC from a protected VM led to a state where recovery operations failed unless the VPG was manually updated. During a Move operation to a vcd recovery site, the VM names being moved were sometimes changed when recovered. This was due to the order that conflicting procedures were executed as part of the move operation. When pairing two sites, an alert was issued immediately after the pairing succeeded that the Zerto Virtual Managers were not connected. The alert disappeared after a few seconds. A warning is now displayed that the two sites are synchronizing. When unpairing two sites, the Zerto Virtual Manager sometimes froze and needed to be restarted. This was due to the order that conflicting procedures were executed as part of the unpair operation. A virtual machine that was added to a VPG and then migrated by vsphere to a host without a VRA, resulted in the VPG being created and meeting SLA, even though the virtual machine was not protected. The time recorded for tasks was dependent on the installed locale version of Windows, causing a discrepancy in the times displayed in the vsphere Client console and the Zerto User Interface, even if the times displayed in the actual machines were the same. This issue occurred when one machine locale was set with en_us and the other with en_gb. The status of a VPG remained as Meeting SLA, even though there was a recovery storage problem. You could not edit a repository to change the path. All running backup jobs are canceled if there is a disconnection between the Zerto Virtual Manager and a VRA, including a disconnection caused when a VRA is rebooted. Offsite backup jobs to a Network SMB repository failed when there was a temporary disconnection with the SMB drive. Messages referring to problems with offsite backups were improved. For example, when access to a repository was not available, the message was changed to clearly reflect this. The Last Full Backup column in the Offsite Backup tab showed the last time a backup ran, whether it succeeded or failed. 2. Plan to Deploy Data Deduplication- 8

9 Release Notes For 3.5 Update 2 This section describes the Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 2 release. Zerto User Interface improvements: An abort backup button has been added to the VPG and VM list screens. Access to the Zerto User Interface from the Zerto Cloud Manager uses either the IP address or FQDN, whichever was specified during the installation. Offsite backup information is now displayed in the user interfaces run from both the protected and recovery sites. Response times have improved, for example with multiple sites when displaying the Sites and Topology tabs and when dismissing and undismissing alerts in the Zerto Cloud Manager. The mechanism for handling ESX/ESXi hosts that become unresponsive has been improved, to cover cases such as a virtual machine set with a NULL UUID. Issues Resolved in 3.5 Update 2 During an upgrade of the protected site, the VPG status did not reflect that the VPG was no longer meeting the SLA. Zerto Virtual Replication installations did not work when the machine where the installation was run was connected to the network wirelessly. The installation of the ZertoVssAgent on a 64bit Windows 2012 R2 operating system failed. An SqlCeException: The database file may be corrupted error caused the Zerto Virtual Manager to crash. Passing invalid data to a VRA, for example, when anti-virus software or firewall scanning is done, caused the VRA to crash. When a VRA crashed during a failover test, for example when there are memory issues, after resolving the issue and restarting the VRA, it would still crash when performing a new failover test. When a Zerto Virtual Manager was restarted while a failover test was stopping the connection between the Zerto Virtual Manager and the VRA could not be re-established. Failing over or moving VPGs that include Linux machines with names greater than 15 characters resulted in the Linux machines not being powered on automatically. A progress bar was displayed, even if the VPG was in an error state and progress was not possible, for example when the VPG needed configuring. When a VPG was paused the last status remained displayed, for example Meeting SLA, even if this was no longer true. When vsan storage is used, after a failover or move operation, the VPG could not be configured for reverse protection. The Repositories tab could not be displayed when backup jobs were running. The description of how to use a preseeded disk when using the Zerto Cloud Manager has been corrected in the documentation. When a ZORG has not been defined, any dialog with a ZORG field now shows an empty value, instead of Unknown. The Zerto Self-service Portal displayed VPGs belonging to other customers to restore from an offsite backup. Network disconnections were not always reestablished to enable an offsite backup to continue, even when the network was up. The next run time for an offsite backup only showed the time and not the date. The time displayed for the backup schedule in the VPGs tab in the Zerto Cloud Manager was the amount of minutes after midnight and not the real time. After an offsite backup failed, the information in different tabs showed different information. Defining a backup window for offsite backups was not saved correctly, for example, a window was created with an extra hour. When creating a repository for offsite backup, if the validation of the repository location failed a meaningless message was displayed. 9

10 Release Notes For 3.5 Update 1 This section describes the Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 Update 1 release. Zerto User Interface improvements: Field names and other texts have been changed to be more easily understood. Fields and buttons are enabled or disabled in line with the operations being performed. Response by the interfacer with multiple peer sites. Pre and post scripts are now run as separate tasks, and displayed separately in the tasks pane in the Zerto User Interface. A customer, without a Zerto license can pair to more than one cloud site to protect his virtual machines to different cloud sites. A customer, either DRaaS or ICDR, cannot initiate a manual offsite backup. The Zerto Self-service Portal times out after 600 seconds with no activity. The Zerto Self-service Portal functionality now enables running and aborting offsite backups. In addition Zerto is constantly improving the quality of the products. Issues Resolved in 3.5 Update 1 Upgrading Zerto Virtual Replication with vcenter credentials that were modified without the Zerto Virtual Manager being updated with the changed credentials causes the upgrade to fail. Upgrading Zerto Virtual Replication and the vcenter Server Windows stopped in the middle of the upgrade caused the upgrade to fail and the existing version of Zerto Virtual Replication to be uninstalled. The upgrade now succeeds even when the vcenter Server is down. After upgrading the Zerto Cloud Manager from version 3.1Ux, accessing the Sites tab caused the Zerto Cloud Manager to freeze. Also, upgrading the Zerto Cloud Manager from version 3.1Ux, required that the history and cache be cleared. The Zerto Virtual Replication version number displayed in the Zerto User Interface was not updated correctly during an upgrade. After upgrading Zerto Virtual Replication the Recovery Report could not be run for operations that occurred before the upgrade. Attempting to run an offsite backup when the recovery site was running a 3.1Ux version of either Zerto Virtual Replication or VRAs crashed the VRAs. Fixes to the Offsite Backup and Restore Handling An offsite backup that ran over midnight was canceled at midnight (00:00:00). An offsite backup scheduled to run at midnight (00:00:00) every day would only run every other day. After creating a VPG with offsite backup defined, the VPG was not listed in the Offsite Backup tab. Failure reasons generated when an offsite backup did not complete successfully were made clearer and the failure reason was added to failed offsite backup events, tasks, and the report. A partial restore is now indicated as such in the Zerto User Interface. With a service profile for a ZORG with the ability back up a VPG did not enable a In-Cloud DR (ICDR) customer to set the repository in the VPG definition. When restoring the virtual machines in a VPG, all the required values must be specified before the restore process can start. Restarting the VBA service does not change the connection ID between the VBA and VRA. The figures displayed for the virtual machine size and number of volumes backed up to a repository and displayed in the VMs tab under the Offsite Backups tab are now displayed correctly. When configuring the restore options for a backed up VPG, clicking Populate takes the values from the VPG definition and overrides any manually configured values. In Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 this included removing the option to power on a restored virtual machine. An offsite backup can be run during a synchronization of the VPG, as long as there are checkpoints available in the journals. After aborting an offsite backup, the option to manually run a new backup was disabled. An error was issued when attempting to create a VPG in the Zerto Self-service Portal, with a service profile that included offsite backup. 10

11 Repository information was not displayed in the Backup Settings dialog from the Manage VPG dialog, when viewed from the protected site. Following a backup, the Backup Repository column in the VPGs tabs was empty. The Backup Repository column in the VMs tabs was empty until the first successful offsite backup was run. Entering an invalid time in the Job Start Time field for an offsite backup in the Manage VPG dialog is marked as an error in the user interface and on saving the VPG, the time is automatically corrected to a valid time. After aborting a backup, the Last Run Result column in the VPGs tab under the Offsite Backup tab displayed Full success instead of Aborted. Changes to the VPG definition were not reflected in the VPGs tab under the Offsite Backup tab. Only one NIC is restored for a virtual machine, even if the original had more than one defined. When a NIC was not defined for a restored virtual machine, a random network is assigned to it instead of no network. The configured NICs in a VPG recovering to vcd are not displayed in the Configure Restored VM dialog. Exporting the list of offsite backups did not export the full list. Fixes to the VPG Handling When a VPG is defined with a recovery datastore that does not have enough free space, the VPG creation fails instead of hanging during the synchronization phase. Pausing a VPG when a VRA is temporarily disconnected from the Zerto Virtual Manager, resulted in the Pause action not being executed, even though the VPG state was displayed in the Zerto user Interface as paused. svmotioning the recovery volumes to a different datastore and then removing the original datastore caused a Storage Profile alert in vcd, placing the VPG in an Error state. Changing the recovery host could result in the path to the virtual machine being too long for the Zerto Virtual Manager database to handle, causing the vcenter Windows service to stop. Changing the recovery datastore to a cluster could not be done after changing the virtual machine recovery host. The recovery host could not be changed if the protected site Zerto Virtual Manager service wasn t running. When a resource pool is defined for the default recovery host, when editing the VPG the IP of the first option in the drop-down was displayed and not the resource pool. When Recovery Reports were generated, they incorrectly contained a reference to VMTools. VMs having zero-sized volumes cannot be added to a VPG to be protected. Dismissing multiple alerts at the same time resulted in a timeout of the Zerto User Interface. Adding a volume or virtual machine to an existing VPG results in a synchronization and the checkpoints are removed from the journal. However, the VPG status remained as Meeting SLA. Failover and move operations could not be initiated from the protected site for VPGs defined with a ZORG, service profile and with extended DR. Fixes to the User Interface and Documentation The Previous button in the How-to-Guide in the Zerto User Interface was disabled when there was a previous screen. The Move button was enabled during a failover test. The figures displayed for in the Datastores tab are now displayed correctly. During initial synchronization, an incorrect estimated time was displayed. The Operation field in the VPGs tab displayed a failover test operation when the actual operation was pausing the VPG or running an offsite backup on the VPG. When defining a repository for offsite backup, the capacity and free space values for the selected repository were not displayed. RDM disks were not masked, so a customer to a CSP could see the RDMs used by the CSP. The Zerto Cloud Manager did not present an Alternate Name column for vcd Cloud Resources to enable masking. You could not define failover, move or test failover networks when defining a VPG via the Zerto Self-service Portal. Documentation of the backup and restore process has been made clearer. Links to the online help have been fixed. Accessing the online help via a link, such as from the Alerts tab, accesses the help page directly without refreshing the display. Use of date parameters in the Zerto Rest APIs has been clarified in the documentation, to refer to the data format of the Zerto Virtual Manager where the API runs. The possible causes and solutions for alerts have been reviewed and where necessary updated in the documentation. 11

12 General Fixes vmotioning a journal or recovery volume to another datastore and then changing the host to another host which cannot access the changed datastore was not prevented until a recovery operation was performed. When a journal datastore is specified for a protected virtual machine in the Zerto User Interface, the datastore was not reflected in the user interface in the Zerto Self-service Portal. Once a journal volume became full, disk space could not be freed up when possible. Attempting to submit a support ticket using an invalid address, presented an error message without the ability to send an directly to Zerto support. Exporting VPG settings ignored the journal datastore. New Features Introduced in Zerto Virtual Replication 3.5 Zerto Virtual Replication includes the following new features: Offsite backup Offsite Backup Ease of Use Specific Help for Alerts and Events Ability to Perform Operations from the Tasks Pane VPG Statuses Datastore Management View Other User Interface Changes Improved Zerto Virtual Manager functionality Journal Handling Tolerant Failover RDM Disk Handling Opening a Support Ticket from the User Interface Support for VMware Functionality: VSAN and Datastore Cluster Support Expanded REST APIs Offsite Backup Cmdlets and Other Cmdlet Enhancements Improved cloud functionality Zerto Cloud Manager Service Profile Additions Offsite Backup With Zerto Virtual Replication 3.5 a new paradigm in data protection is introduced with Offsite Backup. This feature increases the usefulness of data that is replicated for the purposes of business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR). Offsite Backup uses information that is replicated for disaster recovery purposes and leverages it for a backup, retaining daily, weekly, and monthly copies of data, which are available for up to one year. It moves backup operations from the production environment to the replication site, dramatically reducing the overheard on production workloads. Zerto Virtual Replication offsite backup provides the following functionality: The ability to configure when the backup job will run, either daily, at a specific hour or weekly on a specific day. The ability to configure the retention period based on business needs: week, month, 3 months, 6 month, 9 months, year options are available. The backups can be saved to a local drive, where the Zerto Virtual Manager service runs or to a network share that uses the SMB protocol. Recovery is possible from third-party infrastructures including public clouds. A new tab, the Offsite Backup tab has been added to the user interface to enable managing the backups, including monitoring the VPGs that have been backed up and when the next backup job for each of these VPGs will run as well as other information, such as when the last backup was run and the repository used for the backup. 12

13 Backups are run according to a predefined schedule, but when required manually initiated backups can also be started. You can restore virtual machines in a backup, either using the VPG name or by specifying the repository where the backup was saved. During the restore of a backup, you can pick the specific backup to restore from the list of all the backups in the repository and configure the storage and network requirements for each virtual machine being restored. You can receive daily or weekly backup reports by . The report includes full details of what was backed up. You can initiate and abort a backup both from the Zerto User Interface and by using Zerto Virtual Replication cmdlets. The cmdlets are described in Offsite Backup Cmdlets and Other Cmdlet Enhancements. Specific Help for Alerts and Events Additional functionality has been added to help troubleshoot problems. Specifically there are links to the online help for alerts and events. Each alert in the Alerts tab has a unique ID. Clicking the ID link displays online help specific to that alert, with a list of possible causes that triggered the alert and for each cause a possible solution. Each event in the Events tab has a unique ID. Clicking the ID link displays online help specific to that event. Ability to Perform Operations from the Tasks Pane In addition to the status of running tasks and recent tasks being displayed at the top of the Zerto user interface, and in the Tasks pane, you can also perform operations such as committing or rolling back a failover or move operation or stopping a test failover. VPG Statuses The presentation of VPG statuses has been revised to make it easier to understand what is happening. The number of statuses has been reduced and a number of substatuses added to enable a clearer picture of the VPG. For example, the bitmap sync status can be applied in a number of situations and is now a substatus under the main status, such as meeting SLA or not meeting SLA. Datastore Management View A Datastores tab under setup enables monitoring the status of the datastores used by Zerto Virtual Replication to enable ongoing management and planning of data resources, used by Zerto Virtual Replication. Other User Interface Changes The following improvements to the user interface have been made: A Setup tab has been added to the main tabs and includes the following nested tabs: The original VRAs tab, enabling installation and monitoring of VRAs. A Datastores tab, enabling better management and planning of data resources used by Zerto Virtual Replication. A Repositories tab, enabling defining and monitory repositories used for offsite backup. The How-to-Guide includes a new tutorial Create Repository. Both VPG and VRA names are clearly displayed in the details screens for a VPG and VRA, respectively. Ongoing improvements to the usability of the tooltips and context-sensitive help. ZVR-RN-3.5U

14 Operations such as pausing a VPG, any of the recovery operations, such as move or failover, are presented in the same way that the clone or test failover were presented in previous versions, making it clear what is going on in the operation. The version of the Zerto Virtual Replication running at the site can now be seen in the Sites tab, both of the Zerto Virtual Manager and Zerto Cloud Manager user interfaces. The RTO, the time it took to bring up test machines, is displayed in the Recovery Reports under the Reports tab. On first access to a table you are asked whether you want to edit the columns displayed in the table or not. Journal Handling The journal feature has been enhanced to provide the ability to separate the datastore used for the journal from the datastore used for the virtual machine files. When changing the journal datastore from one VRA to another, for example when the host for the current VRA is undergoing maintenance, the volumes are Storage vmotioned to the second VRA. Tolerant Failover The failover and Move operations has been enhanced to allow the operation to complete, even when the recovered virtual machines cannot be powered on. RDM Disk Handling RDM disks are supported as follows: RDM disks with an even number of blocks can replicate to RDM disks of the same size with an even number of blocks and to VMDKs. RDM disks with an odd number of blocks can only replicate to RDM disks of the same size with an odd number of blocks and not to VMDKs. Resizing a protected RDM disk that is recovered as a VMDK disk is handled automatically bu updating the VPG and resizing the VMDK disk in the recovery site. Opening a Support Ticket from the User Interface You can create and submit a support ticket from the Zerto User Interface, which will automatically be logged in the Zerto support system with relevant information. Support for VMware Functionality: VSAN and Datastore Cluster Support Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 supports VMware Virtual SAN, VSAN, the hypervisor-converged storage software that abstracts and pools server-side flash and disk to create a high performing and resilient persistent storage tier at the hypervisor layer. In addition, datastore clusters are supported in a vcenter environment. 14

15 Expanded REST APIs Zerto Virtual Replication REST APIs enable programmatically retrieving information from the Zerto Virtual Manager and performing operations, such as creating a VPG. The following APIs are added to Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.5 to enable performing actions such as creating a VPG and testing and failing over a VPG: Create a VPG vpgs API. Perform a Failover of a Specified VPG /vpgs/{protectiongroupidentifier}/failover. Commit a Failover /vpgs/{protectiongroupidentifier}/failovercommit. Rollback a Failover /vpgs/{protectiongroupidentifier}/failoverrollback. Test a VPG for Failing Over /vpgs/{protectiongroupidentifier}/failovertest. Stop a Failover Test /vpgs/{protectiongroupidentifier}/failoverteststop. Clone the Virtual Machines in a VPG /vpgs/{protectiongroupidentifier}/clonestart. Abort a Cloning Operation /vpgs/{protectiongroupidentifier}/cloneabort. Return information about service profiles, with the ability to filter the result by site /serviceprofiles. Return information about the site where the API is run and the paired sites and well as information about the resources at a specified site, such as the datastores, resource pools, vapps at the site /virtualizationsites. Return information in order to be able to know the status of an action, with the ability to filter the result by status / tasks. Returns information about all ZORGS, Zerto organizations or a specific ZORG /zorgs. Additional information was added to many of the APIs, such as the Org vdc identifier to the vpgs API, or the ZORG identifier to the events API. Note: All APIs from Zerto Virtual Replication version 3.1Ux must be changed to conform to the new formats. The logged-in user information and the protected site and recovery site VRAs used to handle the protection and recovery of a virtual machine are included in the Resource Report. Offsite Backup Cmdlets and Other Cmdlet Enhancements Zerto Virtual Replication cmdlets are available to start and abort an offsite backup job: Start-Backup Starts an offsite backup job. Abort-Backup Aborts a running offsite backup job. In addition, both the FailoverTest-Start and FailoverTest-Stop cmdlets have been renamed to Start- FailoverTest and Stop-FailoverTest, respectively. Authentication of the username and password required to run a cmdlet is enabled by default. Zerto Cloud Manager Service Profile Additions The Zerto Cloud Manager definition of service profiles has been extended to include specifying backup properties as part of the SLA. Zerto Cloud Connector Name The Zerto Cloud Connector name has been changed to clearly represent the cloud connector within the VMware environment. Also, existing cloud connector names can be renamed by redeploying the cloud connector. ZVR-RN-3.5U

16 Known Issues The following are known issues when using Zerto Virtual Replication. Installation/Uninstallation Due to a Windows problem, sometimes when you try to reinstall Zerto Virtual Replication, the Zerto Virtual Manager service is disabled. Workaround: In the CMD window, run sc delete "zerto service" and then rerun the install procedure, or restart the machine running the Zerto Virtual Manager. If you use Chrome to download the VSS agent installation, you are warned that the software is malicious. You can ignore this warning. Due to the way.net is integrated into Windows Server 2012, upgrading a Windows Server 2008 machine running a Zerto Virtual Manager to Windows Server 2012 causes the Zerto Virtual Manager to crash, even after uninstalling and reinstalling Zerto Virtual Replication. Workaround: Uninstall Zerto Virtual Replication from the machine and reinstall it on a new virtual machine running Windows Server Upgrade During the upgrade installation the Zerto Virtual Manager service is set to the local system account, even if had previously been set to another account, such as the domain administrator account. Workaround: Only use a certificate that was created with the Binding flag option. Virtual Replication Appliance (VRA) You have to wait a few minutes after moving a protected virtual machine to another host before you can forcibly uninstall the VRA ghost on the original host. When an ESX/ESXi host is disconnected from the vcenter Server but the network connection is still available, the status of any VPG recovering to this host and the status of the VRA on the host are displayed as OK in the Zerto user interface. However, all recovery operations will fail. If the VRA IP is allocated via DHCP and the DHCP server at a later date allocates a different IP, the VRA does not change the IP. For this reason it is recommended during production to only use static IPs and use static IPs or DHCP during trials. Virtual Protection Group (VPG) and Recovery Attempting to create a VPG when the target datastore is unavailable fails. Workaround: Try again after the datastore is up. When specifying a boot order for virtual machines in a VPG, currently only the Start-up delay to next group value is used between groups, even if the VMware Tools are ready checkbox is checked. The boot order defined for a vapp is not reproduced for a cloned vapp. Export settings from protected site doesn't work properly when replicating to cloud; VPGs do an initial sync after the Export to Import procedure. Import/export VPGs cannot be performed if API Security has been disabled by tweak. Modifying the Definition of a Virtual Protection Group (VPG) Adding a new volume to a VPG while it is being tested causes the VPG to become corrupted. You cannot stop the test nor perform a failover or move on the VPG. Workaround: Remove the VPG using the ForecRemove-ProtectionGroup cmdlet. 16

17 Deleting a VPG can cause the alert status to change temporarily to error and for a ghost VRA to be displayed. This clears up after a few minutes and can be ignored. When masking in the Peer Site Configuration dialog, you do not have to specify a folder for masking. If a value is not specified, the folder value in existing VPGs is blanked out. Workaround: Always specify a folder when masking. Increasing a protected virtual machine disk size to greater than 2TB causes the VPG to enter a Needs Configuration state. Failover, Move and Test Failovers After stopping a failover test, the checkpoint that was used for the test has the following tag added to identify the test: Tested at startdateandtimeoftest(originalcheckpoint_dateandtime). The Tested at startdateandtimeoftest value is taken from the Zerto Virtual Manager and not from the UI. When the locale of the protected site and recovery site are different, the reverse replication settings are incorrect causing problems when attempting failback. Workaround: Do not specify reverse protection or edit the VPG to set failback after the move or failover operation has completed. Recovering a VPG using one of the very earliest checkpoints available can fail when the checkpoint specified is moved out of the journal before the recovery operation can commit. vcloud Director A protected VM replicated from vcd to a vcenter Server, that is connected to the None network, is recovered with a disconnected NIC, even if configured to connect to a network. When creating a VPG replicating to a specific Org vdc, then all Org vdc networks in the owning Organization are available for selection, even those belonging to different Org vdcs inside the same Organization. Adding a new NIC to a protected virtual machine does not update the VPG settings by configuring a network for the NIC, causing an error when setting reverse protection for a Move or Failover operation. Workaround: Manually configure the VPG and add settings for the new NIC. After updating a VPG, for example by adding a new virtual machine to it, and then immediately moving it or failing it over to vcd, causes the vcd reflection to be out of date and recovery virtual machines are not powered on, resulting in the promotion hanging. Workaround: Wait a few minutes between changing the VPG and performing the move or failover operation. If you do not wait, manually power on all recovery virtual machines that are not powered on automatically. Deleting a VPG and keeping the target disks when the VPG is recovered to a vcd v5.1 with storage profiles defined, does not move the disks to a datastore that is contained in the recovery storage profile. This means that if the disks are saved to a datastore in the storage profile, these disks cannot be used fro preseeding later. Recovering a VPG to vcd will fail if the vapp name contains any of the following special characters:! * ' ( ) ; & = + $, /? % # [ ]. Zerto Cloud Manager When creating a VPG from a cloud service provider to a Zerto organization, all the cloud virtual machines are displayed to add to the VPG and not just those belonging to the configured resources of the Zerto organization. When using a Zerto Cloud Connector, only the size of the VMDK is reported for DR usage in the Datastore Management view; the VSWP file was not included. General The backslash character (\) is displayed as %5c in the GUI, for example when used in a virtual machine name. Due to a VMware problem, configuring IPs for the recovery machines is lost when cloning virtual machines with VMXNET3 NIC on Windows 2008 R2 machines. For details and solutions, see microsites/search.do?language=en_us&cmd=displaykc&externalid=

18 VMware does not identify the IP origin for Linux virtual machines and therefore Zerto Virtual Replication cannot know whether it is static or DHCP. After hibernating a laptop running vsphere Client console, you have to restart the console to reload the Zerto Virtual Replication GUI. Zerto Virtual Replication is not localized. VMware issues alarms where the local is not English with XXX. Workaround: Start up the vsphere Client console adding the following argument: -locale en_us, to display all Zerto Virtual Replication alerts in English. If a host is removed from a site, a ghost VRA is created which you can remove. After the host is added back to the site, a ghost virtual machine is displayed in the vcenter hierarchy. Workaround: Remove the ghost virtual machine from the inventory. If the local site Zerto Virtual Replication service is down, you can still recover and clone VPGs. When cloning a VPG, the clone progress bar in the VPG Details screen is not updated. In a multi-site environment and when masking is not implemented, adding a virtual machine to a VPG by editing the VPG from the recovery site, displays all virtual machines on the protected site, 3even those protected to a different recovery site. Invoking the Zerto VSS Agent can cause errors to be written to the Windows application log. These errors can be ignored. Disabling Zerto Virtual Replication cmdlets security stops the Zerto Diagnostics import and export options from working. For further assistance using Zerto Virtual Replication, contact Zerto support at support@zerto.com. Copyright 2014, Zerto Ltd. All rights reserved. ZVR-RN-3.5U