Typical that it happens on a day when I’m travelling, but NetWorker 7.5 SP2 (aka NetWorker 7.5.2) has been released today.
There’s a bunch of updates and bug fixes in this release – I actually have really high hopes for it based on discussions I’ve had with various folks at EMC. I’m about to start an hour long train trip where I’ll be reading the release notes – if you have PowerLink you can access them from here.
I’ll aim to have a summary posting of new features and bug fixes in the next 24 hours. In the interim, let me just say that I’m over the moon to see that one of the first new features is a reversion to default client parallelism of 4 rather than the previous change to 12. This is very good to see changed. (Oh, not to mention support for Windows 2008 R2.)
[Edit, 2010-02-25]
An overview of new features, etc., can be found here.
Hi Preston.
I wander if we’re going to see EMC have some brilliant solution soon, to be able to backup Server 2008 in such a way that it can be recovered from total disaster. Today, they suggest controlling WSBadmin with savepnpc. It’s a problem all the backup application vendors have. Have you heard about whether EMC is trying to address this?
Regards, Johannes
I believe the current state of Windows 2008 R2 backup support in 7.5.2 is not the be-all and end-all of what EMC would like to see available.
In this case we have to recognise that they and other backup vendors are being constrained by Microsoft, who are laying down some fairly challenging rules for disaster recovery of Windows 2008 R2. Even if technically solutions can be engineered that get around this, without the support of Microsoft this means little in an environment where maintaining supportability is key.
In short, as much as anything I believe that the ball is in Microsoft’s court. As I read so recently, Microsoft mainly listen to OEM manufacturers, so it probably comes down to enough customers complaining to enough OEMs to have Microsoft make some adjustments or come to the party on this issue.
In the light of the announcement that VMWare are discontinuing VCB support, I wonder long it will be before EMC get VADP integrated with Networker.
We have never been fans of the vcb method of backing up our virtual machines and have been using ESxpress, however the lack of scheduling and decent backup reporting are getting to be a real pain so we’ve started investigating other options.
Fingers crossed that EMC will pull their collective fingers out!
> We have also been working with several backup partners to integrate
> VADP into their solutions to make backup of vSphere Virtual Machines
> fast, efficient and easy to deploy compared to VCB and other backup solutions.
> Several of our major backup partners have already released VADP
> integrated backup products and we expect most of the major backup
> partners to have VADP integrated backup software by the upcoming
> feature release of the vSphere platform in 2010.
In your testing, how well does the Mac 7.5.2 backup client support backing up Snow Leopard (10.6.x) Macs? We don’t have any 10.6 servers as of yet, but we’ll probably be adding some to our NetWorker backups within the next six months.
I haven’t done any Mac testing as yet … focusing at the moment on Linux/Solaris, will probably get a Mac test done over the weekend.