Project:Amanda Enterprise 3.1 > Amanda Enterprise Edition 3.1 Release Notes

Amanda Enterprise Edition 3.1 Release Notes

Amanda Enterprise 3.1 provides new functionality and fixes the issues reported by Amanda Enterprise customers (see the list below).

Compatibility with previous versions of Amanda Enterprise

  • Amanda Enterprise 3.1 Rapid Installer detects the existing installation of Amanda Enterprise 3.0.x. Amanda Enterprise 3.0.x should be un-installed saving Amanda configuration files and data before upgrading to Amanda Enterprise 3.1. Users can upgrade only from Amanda Enterprise 3.0.x. Un-installing 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 3.1 cannot directly process backup sets created in older versions of the product.
  • The upgrade to 3.1 does not migrate the existing backup set to 3.1. The backup sets will have to be migrated manually.
  • If the files /etc/zmanda/zmc_aee/zmc_user_dumptypes or /etc/zmanda/zmc_aee/zmc_dumptypes were modified in Amanda Enterprise 3.0.x, they will have to manually merged. Please contact Zmanda Support Team for assistance.
  • Upgrade Amanda clients to 3.1 before upgrading the Amanda Enterprise server to 3.1
  • When upgrading from 3.0.x version of Windows Client to 3.1 version, it is recommended to preserve data (answer "YES") during upgrade. If preservation of data is not required, recommendation is to un-install 3.0.x using Add/Remove programs and then install Zmanda Windows Client 3.1.
  • During Windows Client upgrade to 3.1, the amandabackup user is deleted and re-created.
  • Zmanda Windows Client 3.1 no longer uses Zmanda key container for storing backup encryption certificates. To recover encrypted backup archives created using Zmanda Windows Client 3.0.x to another machine, it is still necessary to import Zmanda key container and required encryption certificates on the target machine for restoration.

Compatibility with Zmanda Recovery Manager for MySQL

The Amanda backup server may reside on the same machine as an existing ZRM server, as long as you restart the ZRM processes after you install Amanda Enterprise. This procedure is described here.

New Features

  • Amanda Enterprise server and client support for Ubuntu 9.10, Ubuntu 9.04, Debian 5.0, Fedora 11 and Fedora 12 has been added.
  • Support for Fedora core 4 and Fedora 5 has been dropped.
  • Support for backup and recovery using NDMPv4 protocol.
  • Support for backup and recovery of VMWare ESX servers.
  • Support for MS Exchange 2010.
  • Support for differential backups of MS SQL server using VSS.
  • Support for differential backups of MS Exchange using VSS.
  • Support for restoration of storage groups/database to Exchange recovery storage group and recovery databases.
  • Zmanda Management Console has significant changes to improve usability. More functionality has been added in Backup and Admin pages.
  • New quick restoration capability - ZMC Express Restore.

Customer-reported bugs fixed in Amanda Enterprise Release 3.1

  • All 3.0.x updates/patches are included in Amanda Enterprise 3.1
  • Some of other important bugs that were fixed are:
    • Success or Failure message in the backup notification email subject line.
    • Reduced the number of package dependencies for Solaris installations.
    • Support for International character sets
    • ZMC Monitor page does not refresh automatically.
    • Restoration files/directories containing [ and other characters.
    • Ability to skip backups of certain DLEs in the ZMC Backup What page.
    • ZMC handles exclude lists well
    • ZMC checks the validity of backup set names and reports errors.
    • Success or Failure message in the backup notification email subject line.
    • VMWare application fails if the datastore is not named datastore<num>.
    • Handling incremental backups when the changes in PostgreSQL is less than 16MB.

Known Issues and Workarounds

  • Manual migration of backup sets created in 3.0.x to 3.1
  • ZMC Express Restore restores only the last successful backup. It ignores the Backup Time entered in the Restore What page. The workaround is to use ZMC Select & Explore option or amrecover command.
  • ZMC will not be able to restore successfully if the tape required for restoration is not available in the tape changer slots reserved for the backup set.  Workaround is to make all tapes required for restoration available in the tape changer. The list of tapes required for restoration is displayed in the ZMC Restore Restore page.
  • A ZMC user with Monitor only role will not be able to select a backup set. This issue will be fixed in a patch release.
  • When using ZMC Backup When to schedule backup jobs, the hours field must be specified. Not specifying the hours value will result in incorrect scheduling of backup jobs.
  • When you attempt restoration using ZMC for first time for a backup set, the ZMC Restore What displays a message Problem locating <backup directory>. The workaround is to clear the Host and Directory values and try again.
  • In ZMC Backup Staging, specifying Staging Size as "no more than" %age of the partition size does not work correctly. Use other options for specifying staging size.
  • Backup of extended attributes for Linux and Solaris file systems requires users to select Extended Attributes and set Override to Schily star and SUN tar respectively in ZMC Backup What page (click Advanced Options).
  • Media per Backup and Tapes per Backup in ZMC Backup Where page are not used. Please use same fields (Tapes/Backup) in the Backup When page.
  • Advanced OLE (Backup Lists) can be enabled in ZMC Admin Preferences page. But, this feature is not supported.

Documentation

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

Amanda Enterprise 3.1 documentation provides detailed information on how to install and configure Amanda server and client on these platforms.