What’s new in PowerProtect Data Manager 19.13?

PowerProtect Data Manager version 19.13 was released at the end of March, and so it’s time to have a look at what’s new in this release.

Before we get started, if you want to dive right in to downloading the update or documentation, you can jump across to the Data Manager landing page on Dell’s support site, here. And branching off the Documentation section of that page you’ll find the release notes.

So, let’s have a look at what’s new:

1. Exchange support enhancements:
   • Exchange 2019 is supported on Windows 2019, and Windows 2022 server core.
2. Microsoft SQL Server enhancements:
   • SQL Server 2022 is supported for both centralized and self-service protection models.
   • Data Manager’s support for centralized recovery of SQL Server backups has been enhanced to include options for restoring to original/alternate databases, and providing hierarchical and list views for database instances.
   • Centralised restore support for Application direct or VM direct backup of a single database from an AAG has been streamlined, as has the restore process.
3. Oracle enhancements:
   • Support for Oracle Incremental Merge (OIM) backup and restores for standalone and Oracle RAC systems.
   • Oracle Data Guard backup and restore support.
4. VMware backup and recovery enhancements:
   • Support for backup and restore of encrypted virtual machines using Data Manager’s Transparent Snapshot Data Mover (TSDM) functionality.
   • Support restore of encrypted virutal machines to an alternate vCenter server.
   • Supports the option to restore a virtual machine BIOS UUID.
   • Support for restoring a backup of a VMDK to an alternate virtual machine either for the same, or an alternate vCenter.
   • Support for in-flight encryption of virtual machine backups.
5. Dynamic NAS enhancements:
   • Support for IPv6 with DNAS.
6. Internationalization and Localization:
   • Support has been added for backing up and restoring data hosted on systems running operating systems with Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian and Japanese.
7. Security:
   • Support has been added for RSA SecurID for multi-factor authentication.
8. Reporting:
   • Reports now feature drill-downs on graphics, with the option to save any drill-down data as a CSV.

Because no new version introduction is complete without screen grabs, let’s look at the reporting enhancements that I mentioned.

In the above screen grab, you can see the start of the Backup Jobs report. The donut graph can be clicked on to pull out the backing data for the graph in tabular form:

As you can see, you can page through the data that makes up the graph, or you can export it and save it for further analysis.

This works across the reports within Data Manager. For instance, an asset job report:

In this case, you can see the donut graphs show protected vs unprotected assets. You can leverage that to drill down to just the components you’re interested in. For example, here’s a view of my unprotected virtual machine assets:

Happy updating!