VMware Data Recovery 1.1 is available now!

[admin]

I am happy to announce the availability of VMware Data Recovery (VDR) version 1.1. We highly recommend every VDR customer to upgrade to this release. Note that VDR 1.1 is supported on both vSphere 4.0 and vSphere 4.0 Update 1.

A) What's new in VDR 1.1:

• GUI File Level Restore (FLR) client for Windows virtual machines – this is the fully supported version of the FLR client to allow granular restore of individual files. This new functionality complements the full virtual machine restore capability that has been available since VDR 1.0.

• Support for backing up Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 virtual machines (requires upgrading to vSphere 4.0 Update 1 for VMware Tools support)

• Datarecovery.ini support – this file allows customization of the VDR parameters such as how frequent integrity check and reclaim operations run, maximum concurrent backups allowed and disabling any file level restore operations.

• The VDR appliance is now a HW7 virtual machine, runs 64-bit CentOS 5.2 as the guest OS and has updated VMware Tools.

• OpsLocks is disabled by default when connecting to CIFS shares as a backup destination. In certain instances, disabling OpLocks improves stability of storing and retrieving data from CIFS destinations.

• Ability to add network shares using fully qualified domain name or IP address.

• Enhanced documentation set – the VDR Admin Guide now provides more detailed information on using, understanding and troubleshooting VDR.

B) Top issues resolved in VDR 1.1

• Improved integrity check performance – while the performance improvement is very data dependent (size of dedupe store and number of restore points), everyone should see an improvement in integrity check performance compared to VDR 1.0.x.

• Elimination of spurious damaged restore points and side effects (such as locked dedupe stores until damaged restore points are manually deleted).

• Elimination of reoccurring error -3902 after vCenter Server connection has been restored.

• Various vSphere Client to VDR appliance client connection problems including when there is a VM in inventory with too many IP addresses assigned.

C) Some things to keep in mind when upgrading to VDR 1.1

• Before shutting down the VDR 1.0.x instance, check the backup appliance for the store.lck folder, which is found in

/VMwareDataRecovery/BackupStore/store.lck.

If this folder exists and you are certain there are no other instances of Data Recovery using this deduplication store, delete the store.lck folder. This will eliminate any issues post VDR 1.1 upgrade issues around “Trouble writing files, error -1020 (Sharing violation)” and “Could not restore the Data Recovery appliance configuration” errors.

• Follow the steps outlined in the release notes around the 1.0.x to 1.1 upgrade steps, especially if you want to retain existing restore points.

VDR 1.1 documentation (Release Notes and Admin Guide) can be found here:

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vdr_pubs.html

VDR 1.1 binaries can be found here

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/datarecovery11/ZHcqYmQlcHBiZGUlcA==

Thanks!