Replibit Agent – Release Notes for Agent 2.22

Replibit Agent – Release Notes for Agent 2.22

This Replibit Agent Release 2.22 is a Feature release. 

The primary purpose of this release is to deploy our next generation 2.x Agent for Windows.

Agent 2.22 contains a complete rewrite of our Agent technology, and includes many enhancements to open file scanning, backup resiliency, and performance.

Note: This update does *NOT* require a reboot of your Appliance

ACTION ITEMS: 

1. Please verify that Enable Auto Update is Enabled on the Settings -> Update Manager page on each of your Replibit devices.
2. It is also recommended that you Enable Auto-Enable Remote Assist when upgrading so that remote access will be available to our development team should something go wrong with your upgrade. 

Summary of Enhancements

• New Fast Delta utility to enhance Exchange and SQL performance
  (Disabled by default, contact Axcient Support to activate)
• New Endpoint Manager service
• Analysis Tool now bundled with Agent
• Enhanced Logging
• Failsafe Backup Mode
• Fully include special NTFS journal files
• Force include all open files
• Enable BootVM Checks by default (if supported on Appliance)
• Installer enhancements
• Report agent version to Appliance
• Enable configuration to support FULL vs COPY backup jobs
• Reduced memory footprint

Summary of Bug Fixes

• Backups fail if manually specified disk volume not present
• Fixed multiple issues causing rare agent crash events
• Fixed 5 minute delay when creating VSS snapshot to begin backup
• Fixed several backup freezing or hung edge cases
• Fixed Agent unable to resume on Appliance reboot

Fast Delta

Fast Delta is a new, proprietary block change scanning tool that dramatically improves the backup performance of large database applications like Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL. Enabling Fast Delta can reduce backup times from hours to minutes for larger Exchange and SQL deployments because the agent no longer has to scan the entire DB filesystem for changes not yet committed to VSS. 

Note: Fast Delta is turned OFF by default in this release. To enable Fast delta on any of your Microsoft SQL or Exchange servers exhibiting long backup times, enable fast delta by performing the following steps:

1. Stop the Agent on the Protected System
2. Edit the aristos.cfg file in the Agent installation directory
3. Set USE_FASTDELTA=true and save the file
4. Start the Agent service on the Protected System

Endpoint Manager / Analysis Tool Integration

The new Endpoint Manager service is a command gateway interface between the Appliance and the Agent. When leveraging the Endpoint Manager, the Appliance can now initiate automatic Analysis tool runs on the Protected System simplifying data collection and troubleshooting when working with Axcient support.

Failsafe Backup Mode

Enabled by default, Failsafe Backup mode attempts to make backups more resilient by automatically retrying a backup while excluding failing Volume Shadowcopy Service (VSS) providers.  If the initial backup attempt fails with all writers enabled (Level 1 backup), then the agent will wait a few seconds then attempt the backup again, excluding any writers that failed on the first attempt.  (Level 2 backup).  Finally, if the backup fails again, the agent will attempt one more time with all VSS writers excluded (Level 3 backup) essentially attempting for a crash-consistent backup. Only after trying all three modes and failing will the Agent fail the backup job.

Other Improvements

Agent 2.x does a much better job with open files, attempting to flush memory mapped files to disk, and capturing at least a crash consistent copy of open file types that do not have a VSS writer.

When registering a Protected System with the Appliance for the first time, Agent 2.22 will now enable Boot VM Checks by default if the Appliance hardware supports it.

The Agent version is now reported to the Appliance. It can be viewed on the Protected Systems details page on the Appliance or Vault, as well as on the Backup Status page on the Management Portal

Agent 2.x uses a much smaller memory footprint, especially on systems with large filesystems, compared to previous versions.