NetWorker Releases

NetWorker 8.0 SP1 is out!

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Get ready people of the NetWorker world, NetWorker 8 SP1 is out there in the wild!

It is as of today I can say the sun of NetWorker 8 SP1 has raised.

The NetWorker 8.0 SP1 software contains the following new features and enhancements.
More detailed information on these features is provided in the “EMC NetWorker Administration Guide”:

  • Support for Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and UEFI for Windows
    NetWorker 8.0 SP1 provides Windows System State and File System backup and recovery support for Windows 8 clients, and Windows Server 2012 (including non-optimized backup and recovery for Windows Server 2012 deduplicated volumes), and for UEFI-based systems running Windows.

    Optimized backup of data deduplication volumes on Windows Server 2012 is not supported.

  • Windows BMR for Windows 8 clients and Windows 2012 server
    Windows Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) is available for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 operating systems. This support includes a new Windows Bare Metal Recovery wizard in the NetWorker Management Console.

  • VMware enhancements
    The VMware integration with NetWorker 8.0 SP1 includes the following enhancements:
    • Support for vSphere 5.1
      NetWorker 8.0 SP1 supports vSphere 5.1 as part of the NetWorker integration with VMware. vSphere 5.1 requires the NetWorker 8.0 SP1 or later client on the VADP proxy.

      Note: NetWorker 8.0. SP1 ships with VDDK 5.0 build 427917. The NetWorker Software Compatibility Guide provides an interoperability matrix containing VADP Proxy, vSphere and ESX version compatibility with the NetWorker server.
       
    • Recovery of a VM which already exists in the environment by allowing a name change
      In NetWorker releases previous to 8.0 SP1, a recover of the virtual machine fails if the virtual machine already exists in the specified ESX or VC server. If you did not want to delete the original VM, the VM had to be removed from the inventory, and the datastore folders associated with the VM renamed.

      This is no longer required in NetWorker 8.0 SP1. A VM that already exists in the environment can be recovered by changing the name of the VM.

    • VM display name now visible in winworkr during recovery
      When performing a VM recovery in winworkr, previously the VM display name did not appear, even if the option to show the VM display name was selected during backup. In NetWorker 8.0 SP1, the display name for the VM to be restored now appears in the winworkr program.

    • Configuring CBT using the variable VADP_DISABLE_CBT
      In NetWorker 8.0 SP1 and later, a new variable VADP_DISABLE_CBT allows you to control the enabling or disabling of CBT. The NetWorker and VMware Integration Guide provides more information.

  • Solaris AMD added to Software Distribution wizard support
    The Solaris AMD architecture has been added to the Server and Client supported list for the Software Distribution wizard.
  • NPIV supported for tape device and jukebox
    NetWorker now supports N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV). allowing multiple systems to share a single physical Fibre Channel port. This support includes tape devices and jukeboxes, and allows jukeboxes to be configured in an AIX LPAR environment (AIX versions 6.1 and 7.1).
  • Avamar 6.1 client support
    NetWorker 8.0 SP1 supports the Avamar client version 6.1.
  • LTO-6 tape device support
    NetWorker 8.0 SP1 supports the configuration of LTO-6 tape devices.
  • LTO device default block size increases to 256 KB
    In NetWorker 8.0 SP1 and later, the default block size for an LTO device increases from 128 KB to 256 KB. When NetWorker labels a new or used volume in an LTO device and the Device block size attribute of the device is the handler default, then the label operation uses a 256 KB block size. Increasing the default LTO block size results in Data Domain VTL deduplication ratios improving by up to 15%, and physical tape device write speed over
    higher-latency SAN links improving by an average 30%.

    Note: Volumes will not write at the new block size until the volume is labeled with NetWorker 8.0 SP1.

  • Auto-configuration of NDMP backups
    Previously, NDMP backups required manual configuration to offload DSA workload and activities to storage nodes and clients. When not configured appropriately, NDMP data travels to the storage node via the NetWorker server and the NetWorker server must then handle index processing, creating performance issues. Large NDMP index conversion
    operations need to share the NetWorker server which is typically busy with other backup operations, leading to performance issues.

    NetWorker 8.0 SP1 supports auto-configuration of NDMP backups by automating the selection of resources and offloading of the index conversion.

It is release 8.0.1.1 Build 132 includes generally the following reported defects resolved:

NW125800 – Virtual compatible raw disk restored as local virtual disk
NW133350 – Nsrmmd core dumps occasionally during scheduled cloning operation
NW136212 – NetWorker in DDS environment does not honor storage node attribute Max Active Devices
NW137239 – Recover report details for NDMP clients displays 0 for both the "Size(MB)" and the "Number of Files"
NW137746 – Loading reports from NMC or command line takes longer than expected
NW137777 – Recover target directory permissions are overwritten during NDMP recover on Celerra
NW138445 – During NMM cloning, an extra volume was requested that should not have been
NW138481 – NMC does not display results when Virtualization > Auto discovery is run on Solaris 10 server for VC 5
NW139191 – Configured clone jobs fail but nsrclone command is successful
NW139374 – VADP incremental backups fail for some VMs with error “Could not obtain the drive letter for one of the drives”
NW139705 – nsrexecd memory leak occurs on Windows 2003 cluster after NMSQL server backup
NW140648 – Dedicated Data Domain storage node not able to clone own save set
NW140765 – Ambiguous visibility of target devices while Display Read only Devices & volumes option is checked/unchecked from View tab
NW141010 – NMC dbsrv12 process goes into defunct state on SUSE Linux x64 version 11 SP2
NW141312 – Synthetic full save encounters problem when symbolic link involved
NW141877 – expat.so.1 shipped with NW8 conflict with expat.so.1 on latest RH…
NW141940 – Browse and retention options (-w & -y) in savegrp command line not honored
NW141948 – Nsrd core dump occurs after change to the hostname of Networker server
NW142266 – Client cannot be created successfully due to error “’storage nodes’ contains name of remote dedicated storage node ‘nsrserverhost’”
NW142426 – Snapshot files not removed after VADP image level restore in san mode with more than 1 disk
NW142671 – Nsrd core dump occurs when backup is started
NW143417 – Nsrd initiates simultaneous mount requests for the same volume on different storage nodes
NW119422 – Stop a running clone task from NMC -> Monitor -> Clones
NW128009 – Optimize network socket buffer size
NW129925 – NDMP DSA auto-configuration
NW131260 – Include timestamp with microsecond in DDP logging for DDP/DDCL APIs and DPRINTF
NW131990 – Support multithreaded DD DFA-recover w/ LIBDDP/libDDBoost 2.4 and up
NW133680 – Increase default volume block size for LTO devices
NW137110 – Support multithreaded DD DFA-save w/ LIBDDP/libDDBoost 2.4 and up
NW137173 – Recovery of a VM with RDM restores the RDM to local disk, requiring more free space on data store
NW137186 – Add print functionality to nsrinfo in order to display MySQL metadata save file
NW138307 – WinDR support for uEFI – backup
NW137148 – Update NMC’s Apache httpd to the latest available version
NW139175 – Add support to recover UEFI partitions on Windows OS
NW139589 – Remove PDB bottleneck for cl invocations
NW139839 – Update libDDBoost.* to version 2.5.x for NetWorker 8.0 SP1
NW139861 – NetWorker Client installer should not allow uninstall if NMM is still installed
NW141003 – Add support for Windows Server 2012 ReFS volume as a NetWorker critical volume
NW141144 – New Avtar version to be included with NetWorker 8.0 SP1
NW141146 – Changes to disaster recovery wizard to indicate Storage Spaces physicals disks and exclude Storage Spaces virtual disks
NW141397 – Add a configuration option for save session distribution on Storage nodes
NW141505 – Disaster Recovery backup should fail if critical volume is on Storage Spaces
NW141562 – Global flag to turn off CBT/Turn on Image level backup only
NW141712 – Add support to build WinPE 4.0 for NetWorker 8.0 SP1
NW141749 – Add support for Ultrium LTO-6 tape drives to NetWorker
NW142046 – Improve error message when data in save set attribute not owned by client on the system
NW142177 – SLES High Availability Extension support
NW142503 – Add a NetWorker enabler for CleanSweep
NW143639 – Add VSphere 5.1 support to VADP solution
NW143745 – Packaging changes to support VSphere 5.1
NW144291 – Software distribution wizard server support on Solaris AMD 64 architecture

If you need a specific OS binary of this release, then make contact with EMC Technical support, and they will for sure give you the right thing you need.

These packages are also available at: ftp://ftp.legato.com/pub/eval/2013Q1/

  Or

From EMC new support website “support.emc.com:
https://support.emc.com/search/?text=%22NetWorker%208.0%20SP1%22

After downloading the necessary binary, make sure it is the good build!