Rapid Recovery 6.4 - Release Notes

Virtual Machine-only licensing

As of release 6.4, Quest Rapid Recovery supports VM-only licensing.

Rapid Recovery customers who protect a substantial number of virtual machines can opt to use this new licensing model. The more virtual machines you protect, the more economically advantageous this licensing model is for users.

As in the past, you can only use a single licensing model per Core. Therefore, plan your Core configurations accordingly to take maximum advantage of possible licensing discounts. For example, if you configure one Core to protect primarily virtual machines, you can use VM-only licensing. Other Core configurations with primarily physical protected machine can use standard licensing.

Discounts for VM-only licenses are tiered, starting with as few as 10 licenses. On average, you can save between 10 and 65 percent on the cost of per-machine licenses. For more information, contact your Quest Sales representative and ask about Rapid Recovery Backup and Protection licenses per protected virtual server.

Support for Oracle 18c RDBMS

In Rapid Recovery release 6.4, our application support is expanded to include Oracle 18c relational database management system (RDBMS). This new RDBMS version reaches end of standard support with Oracle in March of 2023, and reaches end of extended support in March of 2026.

Rapid Recovery supports Agent-based protection of Oracle 12c and 18c relational database servers. When using ARCHIVELOG mode, you can protect an Oracle database server and all of its databases, you can restore, perform virtual export, truncate Oracle logs, and perform DBVERIFY database integrity checks.

As described in Support for backup and restore of Linux LVM cache volumes, you can even back up and restore of Linux LVM cache volumes.

VM configuration backup and restore on Hyper-V

Rapid Recovery Core release 6.4 introduces a new feature, the ability to back up and restore virtual machine (VM) configurations on Hyper-V, including the option to include VM configurations during virtual export to Hyper-V virtual machines. This feature was introduced for VMware/ESXi in release 6.3.

Backup. Rapid Recovery Core release 6.4 and later automatically saves agentlessly protected Hyper-V and ESXi virtual machine configurations in each volume image when snapshots are captured. Hyper-V virtual machine configurations are stored in .vmcx files, whereas VMware virtual machine configurations are stored in .vmx files (and related BIOS settings are stored in .nvram files). The relevant files are saved in the custom metadata for each relevant VM volume, and includes hypervisor version information to ensure compatibility.

Restore. Optionally, when restoring data from a recovery point of an agentlessly protected Hyper-V or ESXi machine, you can choose whether to include in the VM all VM configurations and data, or only the data. This choice is presented in the UI through the Restore configuration data check box. This option appears only for Hyper-V or VMware machines protected agentlessly (replacing the Show advanced options check box that is relevant only for machines protected by Rapid Recovery Agent). When the option is selected, all VM configurations for volumes being recovered are restored. When the option is cleared, only data (and not VM configurations) are restored for those volumes.

Virtual export. Optionally, when performing virtual export from a recovery point of an agentlessly protected Hyper-V or ESXi machine, you can choose whether to export all VM configurations and data, or export only the data. This choice is presented in the UI through the Restore configuration data check box. This option appears only for agentlessly protected Hyper-V or ESXi machines. When the option is selected, all VM configurations for volumes being exported to a VM are included in the exported VM. When the option is cleared, only data (and not VM configurations) are included in the exported VM.

Based on the restore or virtual export type, the Restore configuration data option is selected by default in the following situations:

• When restoring data or performing virtual export from a recovery point to the same agentless virtual machine.
• When performing virtual export to a different server of the same hypervisor type. For example, when exporting from a vCenter/ESXi recovery point to a different ESXi VM, or from a Hyper-V recover point a different Hyper-V VM. For both ESXi and Hyper-V, there is no backward compatibility between hypervisor versions.

Otherwise, the Restore configuration data option is not selected by default, although you can change the default option by selecting or clearing this setting.

Support for backup and restore of Linux LVM cache volumes

Rapid Recovery continues to enhance its support of Linux by offering backup and restore of Linux LVM cache volumes.

With Logical Volume Management (LVM) caching, the performance of larger and slower logical volumes is improved by using smaller, faster block devices such as SSD drives to store frequently used blocks.

Rapid Recovery release 6.4 can now back up and restore these smaller, faster volumes.