Amanda Enterprise Edition 2.6.4 Release Notes

Compatibility with previous versions of Amanda Enterprise

• Amanda Enterprise 2.6.4 Rapid Installer detects the existing installation of Amanda Enterprise 2.6.3. Amanda Enterprise 2.6.3 should be uninstalled saving Amanda configuration files and data before upgrading to Amanda Enterprise 2.6.4. Users can upgrade only from Amanda Enterprise 2.6.3. Uninstalling the old release while saving the configuration files is the only way to preserve the backup sets you created in the old release; Amanda Enterprise 2.6.4 cannot directly process backup sets created in older versions of the product. his upgrade procedure only converts backup set configurations created with the Zmanda Management Console. If you have manually created disk list entries that need to be preserved, please contact the Zmanda Support Team for assistance.

• Amanda Enterprise 2.6.4 can report on and restore from backup images created using older versions of Amanda Enterprise (2.5 and later).

• Amanda Enterprise 2.6.3 servers can restore to version 2.6.4 clients as long as the 2.6.4-only zmrecover service is manually disabled on the client. To disable zmrecover services on the client, edit /etc/xinetd.d/zmrecover to include the following line:

disable = yes

• Amanda Enterprise 2.6.4 reads amanda.conf and disklist configuration files from older versions of Amanda converts them to be compatible with version 2.6.4. The newly-written amanda.conf and disklist configuration files will conform to the standard Amanda syntax as documented in the man pages, however all comments will be stripped out, and the order of parameters will be changed. In addition, some legacy option syntax may be updated, which results in messages such as the following in the log file(s):

zm_upgrade:13:4:23, Tue Jun 10, 2008: Updating Amanda configuration tapetest

Mailto value from amandabackup to [email protected]

zm_upgrade:12:22:46, Tue Jun 10, 2008: Updating Amanda configuration tapetest

displayunit value from M to g

zm_upgrade:12:22:44, Tue Jun 10, 2008: Updating Amanda configuration hdtest

tapebufs value from 20 to 1310720

These messages can be safely ignored.

• After performing any Zmanda Management Console (ZMC) version upgrades, you should clear the cache on your browser. If it is not cleared, the cache may contain older pages that are incompatible with the new release.

• The Amanda Enterprise Version 2.6.4 Zmanda Management Console (ZMC) now requires that javascript is enabled in your browser.
• There are additional requirements for 2.6.4 servers and clients (most notably the addition of curl). See the Amanda Enterprise 2.6.4 requirements for a complete list.

New Features

• New Application Agents to support backing up and restoring Oracle, SQL Server, and Microsoft Exchange. A detailed version support matrix is available on the the Zmanda Network Supported Platforms page. Requirements and procedures for application backup are described here.
• Improved user interfaces for Backup What and Backup Verify pages in the ZMC.
• Windows system state backup and restore (including Active Directory, Cert Server and SYSVOL) for all MS Windows platforms.
• Enhanced restore mechanism.
• Custom report improvements, including the ability to save reports in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format.
• Subscription licensing support as well as application licensing support.
• Pre- and Post- backup scripting interface
• Better control of notification emails.
• The Zmanda Management Console now provides feedback links that take you to a form on the Zmanda web site. Here you can comment on the product and its documentation. These comments are used by Zmanda Engineering in planning enhancements for subsequent releases of the product.

Customer-reported bugs fixed in 2.6.4

• All version 2.6.3 patches are included in Amanda Enterprise 2.6.4.
• Amanda Enterprise Versions 2.6.2 and 2.6.3 did not support backing up or restoring hard links and junction points on Windows clients. Version 2.6.4 can back up and restore both.
• A problem with restoring the root directory (/) from the ZMC has been resolved.
• You can now set an arbitrary block size as a device property using the amanda.conf configuration file.
• There was a problem with backing up data in excess of 5GB to Amazon S3 storage. Amanda now allows S3 backups of up to 10TB.
• A problem with using wildcards in exclude lists on Zmanda Windows Clients has been fixed.
• Configuration names used to be limited to 30 characters or less. The limit has been expanded to 255 characters.
• A problem with handling daylight savings (where the calendar displaying backups the day before they actually occurred) has been fixed.
• A broken link to the Monitor page from the Backup Activate page has been fixed.
• Under certain circumstances, the Reports page displays backups with errors as successful. This has been fixed.
• The ZMC Restore What "Explore" view had problems with displaying files that include resource forks from MacOSX clients. This has been fixed.
• Windows clients were being displayed as Linux clients in the ZMC. This has been fixed.

Known Problems with Release 2.6.4

Here is a list of known problems (and their work-arounds) for Amanda Enterprise 2.6.4:

• When restoring Windows clients that include hardlinks, if the Destination directory specified in the restore where page does not exist, then the destination hardlink file cannot be created and the restore for that file will fail. This is also true if destination directory is not specified (i.e., when restoring to original location). The workaround is to rerun the restore process for that particular file. After a second restore the destination hardlink file will be successfully created because the directory will now exist.

• When restoring hardlinked files to Windows clients, with Rename Restore policy selected, the renamed hardlinks will point to the original file instead of the renamed original file.

• When restoring Windows System State to a machine that does not have Active Directory installed, the Zmanda Windows Client does not correctly restore the directories that should be created as junction points. The workaround is to create the following junction points by hand by using the linkd.exe utility included with the Windows 2003 resource kit:

Documentation

For a full list of supported platforms please review the compatibility guide here.

Amanda Enterprise 2.6.4 documentation provides detailed information on how to install and configure Amanda server and client on these platforms.

Product Name Changes in 2.6.4

Zmanda has standardized the way its product names refer to clients, servers, and application agents in the product catalog, documentation, and web site. Although the old product names may still appear in directory structures and command names for compatibility with previous versions, the official product names can be found here.