Archive:Release Notes 4.2.2

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THE CONTENT OF THIS PAGE IS OUTDATED
SEP AG has discontinued support for obsolete SEP sesam versions. Instructions are still available for these SEP sesam products, however, SEP AG accepts no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies in the instructions or for the incorrect operation of obsolete SEP sesam software. It is strongly recommended that you update your SEP sesam software to the latest version. For the latest version of SEP sesam documentation, see documentation home.

SEP sesam Release 4.2

Latest Version

Updating your SEP sesam Installation

In case you update from the following versions:

  • 3.6/4.x: Direct update from any of these versions is possible.

Newer release

Release notes for SEP sesam 4.4.1

Former releases

Release notes for SEP sesam 4.2.1

Important changes

Attention: Important Changes
VDDK 5.5 since version 4.2.2.35
  • VMware VDDK 5.5 is supported since version 4.2.2.35
Microsoft Exchange
  • Major changes/bugfixes for Exchange have been made (see History for more details). Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 will be supported with SEP sesam version 4.2.2.27.
  • Microsoft .Net Framework 4 required since Version 4.2.2.35: The Exchange Server item browsing DLL sbc_es.dll is now built with .Net 4. As a consequence all clients with Exchange Server backup tasks require a Microsoft .Net Framework 4 installation.
Requirement .Net 4.0 on Windows systems
  • SEP sesam SystemTray is now built with Microsoft .Net Framework 4. As a consequence the SEP Sesam Server requires a Microsoft .Net Framework 4 installation. During a SEP sesam Client installation or upgrade the SEP Sesam SystemTray can be omitted. This avoids the need for a .Net 4 installation on SEP sesam Clients.
Windows Backup Default Exclude Type with Pattern match
  • Excluding a folder with Regular Expressions must end with '/$' to prevent accidentally skipped data, e.g. otherwise directories or files whose names are substrings of the excluded folder may be excluded. Since SEP sesam version 4.2.2.40 the exclude type can be set explicitly in the Sesam GUI task properties to either 'pattern' or 'regexp' (PCRE) in case of a Windows client. The default is 'pattern'. Metacharacters must be 'escaped', e.g. use '\.' to match a '.' with regular expressions! In case of UNIX/Linux the exclude item are according to "emacs regex mode". A path must end with '$' to indicate a full match, e.g. '/var/opt/sesam$'. The GUI source and exclude list browser sets the exclude items with the appropriate format. Attention: Older exclude lists must be checked to avoid data loss!
Windows Backing up Network Shares (UNC) now including ACLs
  • Now a Windows backup task which is set up to backup Network Shares (UNC) does back up the Access Control List (ACL) too. The user account for the Sesam Service must have sufficient rights to backup the ACL otherwise the backup will end with warnings and will show ERROR_PRIVILEGE_NOT_HELD (1314) 'A required privilege is not held by the client'. If the ACL cannot be backed up or should not be backed up the option '-o skip_acl' must be set in the task property 'Backup options'.
Browsing VMware improved
  • The browsing functionality to configure a VMware backup task's source (virtual machines) is now done with buffered information. Therefore the selection can be done very quickly.

Known Issues

Known Issues:
SEP sesam doesn't support Java 8
Install Java 6 or 7
With Java™ SE Development Kit 7, Update 51 (JDK 7u51) the SEP sesam GUI Server will not start up.
Since Java™ SE Development Kit 7, Update 51 (JDK 7u51) the java policy requires the right to listen on port 11401!
Fixed: Version 4.2.2.35: See Wiki article JRE Update.
Windows Backup Exclude List with Regular Expressions must end with '/$' to prevent accidentally skipped data
  • Excluding a folder without a slash at the end of the folder name can lead to the exclusion of additional folders whose names are substrings of the excluded folder. This occurs since the exclude list uses regular expressions for exclusion. That means e.g. if the folder 'C:/Temp' is excluded from the backup the folders 'C:/Temp1', 'C:/Temp_backup', etc. are also excluded from the backup. To avoid this behavior use C:/Temp/$ to exclude only the folder 'C:/Temp/'.
Fixed: Version 4.2.2.40: Now the Windows backup tasks exclude_type is set to 'pattern'. If the exclude type is explicitly set to 'regexp' then the GUI generates the exclude items during browsing with ending '/$'.
Windows Backup Exclude List with Regular Expressions are modified
  • Issue: 16913 - Windows exclude patterns with regular expressions are modified, e.g. correct regular exclude pattern "\.ini$" is mapped to "\\.ini$".
Fixed: Version 4.2.2.41 (not yet released)
In version v4.2.2.35/.40 the Network Share (UNC) path backup does not exclude directories
  • Now the exclude_type 'pattern' is the default but this exclude type does not skip the 'UNC' prefix to match with '\\server\share\path'. Workaround: Use exclude_type 'regexp' for Network Shares.
In Version 4.2.2.35 Drive Configuration during installation failed
  • The automatic insert of hardware tape drives into the Sesam database failed in version 4.2.2.35.
Fixed: since version 4.2.2.36.
Windows Tape Device Block Size Bigger 64K
  • Windows specific: Reading from the tape with a buffer size bigger 64K is not supported with some Ultrium Device drivers. The ERROR_INVALID_FUNCTION is returned.
Fixed: In version 4.2.2.27 (SMS 4.2R6). Patches for Release 4.2.2.16-19 (SMS and STPD) are available.
  • Windows specific: If a tape device allows writing blocks with a larger size, e.g. 512K, this could lead to problems during restore or migration.
  • Sesam SMS on Windows is able to read such blocks up to a size of 512K. SMS internally uses 64K block size - except for Tape Trailer which is written with 2K.
Fixed: Version 4.2.2.35. Patches for Release 4.2.2.16-19 (SMS and STPD) are available under http://download.sep.de/servicepacks/4.2/windows/x64/ and http://download.sep.de/servicepacks/4.2/windows/x86/. To be able to automatically apply these patches .Net has to be installed on the system.
Exchange Server archive databases
  • Even though archive databases are included in an exchange backup, 'browsing' and restore of those databases and the included items is not yet supported.
VDDK 5.5 for Windows RDS/Client - supported since version 4.2.2.35
  • To use VDDK 5.5 on Windows RDS/Clients the powershell script <SEPsesam>\bin\sesam\set_vddk.ps1 is used during update. The script can either be manually called with 'set_vddk.ps1 -e install'. To force the installation the switch '-f' is used: 'set_vddk.ps1 -e install -f'.
VDDK 5.1.1 for Windows RDS/Client
  • To use VDDK 5.1.1 on Windows RDS/Clients the powershell script <SEPsesam>\bin\sesam\set_vddk.ps1 has to be manually executed. On a server this script is automatically executed when updating to 4.2.2.16.
Fixed: Version 4.2.2.35: Now the script is called during update for Windows RDS and Clients too.
vSphere
  • VM names including the $ sign are not supported
  • CBT backup does not work if path names of 2 VMDKs differ only in case
  • Backup of virtual machines with long backup source stops with Buffer to small: requested: .... available: 1024. The reason of long backup sources could be a lot of VMDK files attached to one virtual machine or long VMDK pathes. (fixed up from 4.3.1.16)
  • Virtual machines, which are located on a VMware DataStores with @ sign, cannot be backed up.
Apostrophes are not allowed in Source Path
  • SEP sesam does not support a backup source with an apostrophe (') as part of the path name.
Microsoft SharePoint
  • The previous SEP sesam 4.2.1.27 Microsoft Office 'SharePoint Server' (MOSS) backup task types 'SharePoint Server' (to store the server components data) and 'SharePoint Sites' (to store the site collections) are not longer supported due to Microsoft changes (stsadm deprecated). Instead only a different SQL Server based 'SharePoint Server' backup type is supplied. The old tasks must be migrated to the new 'SharePoint Server' task type.
  • There are 2 different document retrieving DLLs sqlmgr.dll to support SharePoint 2007 or 2010/2013. The default sqlmgr.dll is able to retrieve documents for SharePoint 2010 or 2013. To support SharePoint 2007 the sqlmgr.dll must be exchanged.
  • Only FULL and COPY backup types are supported.
  • Distributed environments with databases distributed to more than one Microsoft SQL Server are not supported.
  • The Restore Wizard only provides the recent document versions. The document histories (older versions) are not selectable.
Microsoft SQL Server 2012
  • Backup is supported on SQL Server 2012
  • Backup must not run on the replicated databases if consistence to original is not given due to the chosen type Types of Replication, e.g. if the type of replication is different to Transactional Replication.
  • To backup and restore Replicated Databases the requirements under Back Up and Restore Replicated Databases must be fulfilled: The back up of replicated databases and their associated system databases should be executed regularly.
Microsoft Data Deduplication enabled Volumes
  • Data Deduplication enabled volumes are NOT supported by SEP sesam version 4.2.2. 'DeDup reparse points' may be saved without the file data.
Microsoft Hyper-V Support for Cluster
  • Hyper-V is supported but is not yet available for clustered environment.
Fixed: In version 4.2.2.40 clustered environment is supported
Media Handling
  • Media pool option Close tape on init has no functionality
GUI
Fixed: In version 4.2.2.40 the special settings needed for JRE Version 7 Update 51 are implemented.


Discontinued SEP sesam Server support

SEP sesam Server package installation and support is no longer offered on the following systems:

  • SLES 9
  • SLES 11 SP1
  • Debian Lenny

Note: SLES 11 SP2/SP3 is still supported.

Extensions:

  • Ingres
  • Marathon Everrun

This does not affect SEP sesam Client packages. For a definite list of supported SEP sesam Clients please see SEP sesam Support Matrix.

New supported systems

See SEP sesam Support Matrix

Mac OS X 10.6/10.7/10.8

SEP sesam Client and GUI packages 4.2.2 for Mac OS X 10.6/10.7/10.8 are available for download at download MacOS.

Debian Wheezy

SEP sesam packages for Debian Wheezy (i386 and amd64) are now available for download at download Debian Wheezy.

Windows Server 2012/ Windows 8

SEP sesam Windows packages for Windows Server 2012/ Windows 8 are now available for download at download SEP sesam.

End of maintenance announcement for older SEP sesam versions

  • Maintenance for SEP sesam version 4.2.1 will end on December 31st, 2014.
  • Maintenance for SEP sesam version 4.0 ended on July 31st, 2013.

This does not affect SEP sesam Client packages for which there are no newer versions available.

New Features

SEP sesam Server Disaster Recovery

BSR Linux completely redesigned. Now it is based on: Relax-and-Recover (REAR) a setup-and-forget Linux bare metal disaster recovery solution.

Additional Features:

  • Install Sesam RDS - not only Sesam Client
  • Mount NFS volumes within booted 'Live CD'

SEP sesam Secure Remote Access

Introduction of an additional access mode: SM_SSH (SEP sesam Secure Remote Access), a SEP sesam specific extention of the SSH, including SEP sesam specific extensions like setting of the PATH variable, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, Java etc.

HTTP protocol supported

In addition to the standard FTP protocol (2 ports required) HTTP backup/restore is now supported (1 port required).

License

Time consuming license check of vSphere or ESX servers has been improved by using buffered data.

Support of new SEP license keys.

  • SharePoint with user license
  • Exchange Server with user license
  • Exchange Server DAG license
  • Windows Workstation Client
  • Macintosh Workstation Client in addition to Server license.
  • Hyper-V License for every Hyper-V 3.0 resource
  • License grace timeout

Volume Based License

  • Based on a yearly license model with one price for an overall usage for the entire environment without any additional costs
  • The license price is based on used storage for backup

PostgreSQL 9.2,9.3

  • Now Supported as SEP sesam database

NetIQ eDirectory

  • Now Supported

Windows

  • Microsoft Hyper-V Support for Cluster
Now Supported
  • Exchange
Major changes/bugfixes have been made (see History for more details).
Since Version 4.2.2.35: The Exchange Server item browsing DLL sbc_es.dll is now built with .Net 4. As a consequence all clients with Exchange Server backup tasks require a Microsoft .Net Framework 4 installation.
Exchange Server archive databases: Even though archive databases are included in an exchange backup, 'browsing' and restore of those databases and the included items is not yet supported.
  • MS SQL 2012
Now Supported
  • MySQL
Now Supported
  • SharePoint
SharePoint Farm and Site backup completely redesigned. The procedure for the backup type 'SharePoint Server' is now based on Windows SharePoint Services VSS Writer.
  • System Disaster Recovery
System Disaster Recovery based on ASR Writer: Using VSS Automated System Recovery for Disaster Recovery
  • SEP sesam System Tray
SEP sesam System Tray is now built with .Net 4. As a consequence the SEP Sesam Server requires a Microsoft .Net Framework 4 installation. During the SEP sesam Client installation or upgrade the SEP Sesam System Tray can be omitted. The 'Set SEP sesam Client' program is part of the SEP sesam System Tray and therefore is not available if SEP Sesam System Tray is not installed. See Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Web Installer) System Requirements.
Supported Operating Systems for Microsoft .NET Framework 4:
  • Windows XP SP3
  • Windows Server 2003 SP2
  • Windows Vista SP1 or later
  • Windows Server 2008 (not supported on Server Core Role)
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 (not supported on Server Core Role)
  • Windows 7
  • Windows 7 SP1
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
  • Windows Server 2008 (not supported on Server Core Role)
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 (not supported on Server Core Role)

VDDK

Supported VDDKs are 5.0, 5.1.1 and 5.5 (since SEP sesam version 4.2.2.35).

Major fixes and changes