New Features - Media Management

This release of the software includes the following new features:

Cloud Storage

• Cloud Storage enables you to configure and use online storage devices — cloud storage devices — as storage targets. Cloud Storage reduces the need to maintain hardware resources, such as tape or magnetic storage devices, at onsite locations. It also provides the ability to easily increase your storage capacity as and when it is required. See Cloud Storage for more details.
• The following cloud storage devices are now supported:
  • EMC Atmos
  • Iron Mountain ASP

Command Line Interface

• Support for mass-deleting MediaAgents by themselves or along with their associated clients and vice-versa by including the qdelete mediaagent and qdelete client commands, as appropriate, in a script and then running the script from the correct location. Mass deletion of these items is useful if you want to remove them after a split of a CommCell.
• Support for labeling standalone drives using the new qdrive stampmedia command.

Data Integrity Validation

The integrity of data protection operations can be ensured by enabling Data Integrity Validation at the MediaAgent. Data Integrity Validation can be used to verify the data stored in the media as well as the data transferred over network. See Data Integrity Validation for more information.

Deduplication

• Single Instance Storage feature is renamed to Deduplication.

• Deduplication at the block level eliminates storing redundant blocks of data within a given file resulting in increased storage space saving, particularly in the case of large files like database files. See Deduplication for more details.

• With the introduction of Deduplication at the data block level, support for deduplication is now extended to several agents. Large files like database files will now benefit significant space savings in backup storage. See Deduplication for more information. See Deduplication - Support for list of supported agents.

• Deduplication is now fortified by the introduction of N-Instancing, where you can store more than one instance of the deduplicated object. N-Instancing protects integrity of the data protection operations in the event of any possible data corruption to one copy of the deduplicated data, if more than one instance of the block/object is available on the storage. See N-Instancing (Number of Instances) for more information.

• The introduction of specially designed container files for storing deduplicated data increases the throughput and scalability of data deduplication. See Deduplication - Overview for more information and decreases the storage requirements.
• Identifying the disk to host the Deduplication Store is made easier. You can use the deduplication tool to simulate the store operations and receive recommendations on the disk performance, size of application data that can be handled, and operational statistics. See Deduplication Store for more information.

Deployment

• Silent Install for Windows now supports Multi Instancing; parameters can be specified for Instance number, GxCVD and GxEvMgrC port numbers, Client Group Name, and Storage Policy in the .ini file used when performing a Silent Install.

• You can now use a couple of package management systems to install and uninstall selected Linux agents.  The Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) package management system allows you to install and uninstall all Linux versions of the Unix File System iDataAgent, Oracle iDataAgent, Oracle RAC iDataAgent, and the Unix MediaAgent. Similarly, the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) package management system allows you to install and uninstall all Debian Linux versions of these agents. These package management systems transport install content from the DVD media to the client machine to ensure successful installs of the affected agents. Using package managements systems is useful especially for a large number of installs and in cases where a network mount option is not available to the user. These package management systems can be used with traditional, silent, and cluster installs. See Installation for more information.

• For Unix, File System iDataAgent, Oracle iDataAgent and/or MediaAgent software can be installed on a computer that is not part of a CommCell; the computer can subsequently be added to the CommCell as a Client and/or MediaAgent. This type of install can be performed without involving the CommServe until you are ready to start using the Agent or MediaAgent software in the CommCell. For more information, see Decoupled Install.

• During software installations, the Select Platforms window will display the User Registry Keys field when GalaxyInstallerFlags registry keys have been enabled on the computer. Hover over the field to see which keys have been set, as well as their values. For more information, see Deployment.

• Upgrades can be configured to execute automatically for supported clients and MediaAgents, which expedites and facilitates the upgrade process for your CommCell environment. For more information, see Automatic Upgrade.

  This feature/product/platform requires a special software installation package. Contact your software provider to obtain this package.

Library

• There are now two user capabilities for library operations: Library Management, and Library Administration. The new Library Administration capability will provide library administrative operations, whereas the existing Library Management capability will provide critical library management rights such as Delete Contents, Erase Spare Media, and Overwrite Media options, in addition to all the rights in Library Administration capability. See Capabilities and Permitted Actions (by Feature)  for more information.

• It is now possible to monitor disk fragmentation levels in magnetic libraries using the new admin job Magnetic Library Maintenance. When executed, the job collects fragmentation details on the magnetic library and provides the File Fragmentation Analysis details in the Library and Drive Report. See Magnetic Library Maintenance for more details.

• Removable magnetic disk drives are now supported on Linux MediaAgents. See Removable Magnetic Disk Drives for more details.

• Magnetic volume creation can be now configured based on the volume size. See Configure Magnetic Volume Size for more information.

Media

• When a previously discovered media is imported into a library, it is assigned to the corresponding scratch pool based on the media type. See Import Media - Other Considerations for more information.
• In CommCell Migration, it is now possible to reuse the migrated media in the destination CommCell, even if the option to reuse media was not selected during migration. See Mark Migrated Media Reusable for more information.
• If a existing bad media in the Retired Media pool is found to be fit for use, you can mark the media good using the Mark Media Good option at the media level.

• If a storage policy is created with a valid retention criteria other than infinite retention, then the option Enable Managed Disk Space for magnetic data is now automatically enabled in the copies. See Data Aging and Thresholds for Managed Disk Space on Magnetic Libraries for more information.

• Magnetic disk volumes (in Windows platform) found to be dirty are now prevented from access by marking the volume offline. The volume must be manually brought back online, once it is ready for access. See Magnetic Libraries for more details.

• View the Contents of a Media now provides additional details on the backup jobs stored on the media, such as total size of all the jobs stored in the media, size of data on media for the corresponding archive file, size of the backup job, time until data is retained on the media.

• When erasing spare media, it is now possible to erase multiple spare media in a single operation. See Erase Spare or Retired Media for step-by-step instructions.

• List Media operation can now predict the tape storage as well as the magnetic storage required for data recovery operations.

• By default, Synthetic Full Backup jobs now use appendable media each time the job is run. See Synthetic Full Backups for more details.

MediaAgents

• You can now update MediaAgents with the latest hardware changes by initiating a hardware scan from the corresponding MediaAgents.  See MediaAgent for more details.

• The MediaAgent Management capability now enables you to perform the following:
  • Use Library and Drive Configuration window to configure or deconfigure libraries and drives associated with the MediaAgent.
  • Create, modify, and delete storage policies and storage policy copies using libraries associated with the MediaAgent.
  • Add data paths to the MediaAgent.  

Media Explorer

• The Media Explorer installation is instance aware. You can now install the Media Explorer to a selected software instance.

• Media Explorer for NAS now provides an option to read data from tapes that are attached to a file server.

Media Management

• Shared magnetic libraries with dynamic mount path is now supported by MediaAgents installed on Windows X64 operating systems. See Shared Magnetic libraries with Dynamic Mount Paths for more information.
• It is now possible to select a specific MediaAgent, library or drive pool for backup operations, at the job level.

• Accidentally deleting the contents of a magnetic mount path can be prevented. See Prevent Accidentally Deleting the Contents of a Mount Path for more information.

Single Instance Storage