A2 Release Notes 6.1 #8147
Alike v6.1
Released: 4/2/2019
A major feature release with stabilizations. All A2 customers are encouraged to upgrade to this build
Please note:
This update introduces the use of new temporary data files on the A2 system drive. We recommended 16-24GB disks, if possible. Alternatively, customers with large amounts of RAM available can opt to place these temporary files on a ram disk (setup in the console menu), for improved scalability in larger environments.
Note for users running the A2 on bare-metal:
The kernel update will not automatically apply on bare-metal A2 installs. This was done to avoid any potential driver/boot issues. However, if you are using a CIFS based ADS or ODS, this kernel update is required, so please contact technical support to arrange assistance upgrading.
Note for Amazon S3 users:
In some cases the Offsite Vaults will not re-mount upon reboot. To correct this, simply forget and reconnect your ODS settings from the A2 console.
Features and Improvements
- Persistent ABDs. ABDs are reused between jobs reducing I/O and job time
- Dedicated TCP sockets for all backup data transmissions to greatly improve performance and reliability
- Eliminate CIFS/SMB kernel bug causing periodic "hangs"
- Upgraded Linux kernel to improve support for Spectre/Meltdown cpu fixes
- MSP support for the A2
- Support for S3 "compatible" cloud storage
- Console option to "raid" multiple local disks for use as a datastore
- Many UI usability and responsive updates
- Ephemeral local (or ramdisk) DB to greatly speed up commit operations
- Significant Performance and responsiveness improvements to restoreFS
- Major full VM restore performance improvement for Xen
- Multiple drives are processed concurrently in full restore jobs
- Revert Restores are now available
- Console option to run system cleanup tasks
Bug Fixes
- Eliminate ABD "missing seed file" error
- Eliminate DataEngine commit failures with "null"
- Improve/reduce Xen API frequent disconnects ("transport error")
- Increase restoreFS timeout period
- Fix bug (divide by zero error) in CBT jobs with no changes
- Add noatime to mount options where applicable to reduce I/O on DS
- Squash Crontab emailing errors
- ADS resize "max size" is fixed
- Default to native ADS format
- Detect unchanged DBs in archival process
- Handle "exotic locale strings" in WMI calls
- Eliminate null pointer exceptin during purge log processing
- Fix log rotation for engine.log
- Ads/ods status files had improper file ownership
- ABD deployment no longer fails when hosts are unlicensed
- Prevent deadlock/starvation during maintenance purge jobs
- Fix NFS mount permissions on creation
- Java DB performance optimzation
- Java memory tuning for arena memory
- Set maximum thread counts for VMs with many disks
- Hyper-V snapshot errors clarification
- Consider ods.db in sync calculations
- Clean out JV directory before Java startup
- Saving ABD settings no longer caused UI glitch
- Improve journaling DB rebuild performance
- Eliminate "Vaults and deletes are unmatched" situation
- Give ABDs DNS settings from A2 when DHCP is unavailable
- Drastic "commit" performance improvement
- Manual command/option to force a particular version retention number for VM
- Fix invalid flags file that can break DB rebuild
- Dynamic copy of munger binary to ABDs
- Variuos A2 Logging and Error Handling Tweaks
- Eliminate ABD "munge stalls" at 0%
Known Issues
A2's Jobs directory can grow large, requiring manual cleanup, for single-pass replication jobsADS/ODS can report the available space incorrectly for local/unencapsulated stores- Vaulting bandwidth controls not yet available
- LVM file-level restore not supported for RestoreFS (full restores are supported)
- Deleting an entire VM from the UI will remove it to be lost from any configured jobs
- Dashboard graph empty on first day after initial install and setup