Chat now with support
Chat with Support

LiteSpeed for SQL Server 8.8 - Release Notes

Release Notes

LiteSpeed® for SQL Server® 8.8

Release Notes

March 2019

These release notes provide information about the LiteSpeed for SQL Server release.

Topics:

About this release

LiteSpeed for SQL Server, or LiteSpeed, is a fast and flexible backup and recovery solution that allows DBAs to easily maintain complete control over the backup and recovery process. Its low-impact, high-performance compression and encryption technology enables users to reduce storage costs and protect data, while improving both backup and disaster recovery times. With the improved compression and LiteSpeed's Fast Compression technology, LiteSpeed for SQL Server can further reduce disk space and backup time up to another 85% over traditional, compressed full backup solutions. The result is a unique backup and recovery approach, unmatched in flexibility, that greatly reduces backup times, creates a significantly smaller storage footprint, and maintains a high level of recoverability.

  • LiteSpeed 8.8 is a minor release,

Key Benefits

  • Store database backups directly into the following cloud platforms: Microsoft Azure Blob storage, Amazon S3 and Google Storage.

  • Reduce storage requirements to save valuable disk space with Fast Compression (reduce storage and improve backup times up to 85% over traditional full backup solutions)
  • Optimize use of available server resources with LiteSpeed's Adaptive Compression
  • Reduce backup times to improve maintenance windows
  • Reduce restore times to avoid excessive downtime
  • Automate backup testing and running database consistency checks using Automated Restore

  • Easily configure backup jobs and maintenance plans on multiple instances by deploying LiteSpeed Backup Templates
  • Easily configure and monitor Log Shipping using the Create LiteSpeed Log Shipping Plan Wizard and Monitoring tab in the LiteSpeed UI Console
  • Recover data and schema from backups using LiteSpeed's Object Level Recovery
  • Undo critical transactions using LiteSpeed's Transaction Log Reader
  • View backup performance across the enterprise using LiteSpeed's centralized reporting repository
  • Easily manage SQL Agent jobs across multiple servers using LiteSpeed's Job Manager
  • Easily configure maintenance plans across the enterprise using LiteSpeed's Maintenance Plan Designer
  • Leverage LiteSpeed's advanced engine tuning, including CPU Affinity, CPU Throttling, and Threading options
  • Analyze your environment for best backup performance and identify bottlenecks using LiteSpeed's Backup Analyzer
  • Eight highly optimized levels of compression
  • Secure data using backup encryption up to AES-256

New Features

New features in LiteSpeed 8.8:

  • Backup Templates now support the differential backup type [LS-230]
  • Backup Templates now support IBM Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager) [LS-547]
  • Automated Restore now has the ability to do point in time restores [LS-532]
  • LiteSpeed now support backups for TDE databases with Sql Server 2017 CU7 [LS-825]
  • There have been Remote Deploy improvements [LS-505, LS-506, LS-508, LS-509, LS-818]

See also:

Enhancements

The following is a list of enhancements implemented in LiteSpeed 8.8.

Table 1: General enhancements

Enhancement Issue ID
Use a backup template to skip LOG backups only on LogShipping databases. LS-1193
Azure Germany region has been added to supported regions. LS-1006
Amazon S3 Paris region has been added to supported regions. LS-1005
Windows Server Core versions are supported (starting with Windows Server Core 2008 R2) LS-933
Verify backups from the console (disk, cloud and TSM backups) LS-870
Log Reader and OLR now support the SQL Server Graph databases. LS-736
Use regular expressions to exclude databases from backups in the backup template (Maintenance Plans only). LS-729
Overview and Backup History reports have been updated LS-624
Automated restore can do point in time restores: either a static point in time or something dynamic (for example 4 hours prior to recovery). LS-532
LogReader now supports export of changed data to CSV, DB, and HTML. LS-518
OLR now supports the SQL Server Varbinary(max) data type. LS-395

Resolved Issues

In LiteSpeed 8.8

The following is a list of issues addressed in release 8.8

Resolved Issue Issue ID

Corrected a problem on restoring on old backup to source database. Automated restore used to incorrectly choose older backups with a higher LSN number that newer backups created after the restore.

LS-514
Corrected a problem where DCR backup files larger than 4GB with Verify option turned on failed. LS-924
Corrected a problem behind error on upgrade of server during upgrade of LiteSpeed Local 'Latin1_General_100_CS_AS_KS_WS_SC' LS-982
Cloud browsing performance has been improved in maintenance plans. This is specifically related to the time taken to complete backup jobs when cleanup is enabled. LS-1000
Corrected a display problem, when a backup or restore verify ran for a longer period of time it showed up in the console as failed but was still running in the background.. The central repository is now updated in real time with progress percentage of restore. LS-1027
Corrected a problem where OLR failed to start when processing more than 200 TLOG backups. LS-1030
TSM Issue "Error in conversion TSMEstimatedSize" has been fixed. LS-1035
Issue related to TSM server generates too many TSM database transactions has been fixed. LS-1036
Issue "Template was not deployed. Installed LiteSpeed version (8.6.1.36) does not support Azure Blob Storage." when deploying the template has been fixed. LS-1037
The help files have been updated to include always on group support in SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2016. LS-1123
Log shipping jobs do not check contiguous memory before executing any more. LS-1127
The option to "Force a full backup if one has not been created" is now applied in the case where a database name does not match the logical name of the MDF file. LS-1150
xp_restore_verifyonly now reports compression level or adaptive compression mode LS-1187
Overlapped write has been disabled by default for network storage since it generates too many issues with non-compatible windows storage. LS-1197
The ability to add / hide copy-only full backups from a selection has been added to Intellirestore LS-1207
Fast compression template job now records failed backups to Litespeed activity. LS-1220
Fast compression maintenance plans now support variable “%TYPE%". LS-1246
Litepseed now sets maximum striping/CloudPartSize values for backups to cloud databases that cannot be read. LS-1262
Improve stability of a backup transfer process to Amazon cloud. LS-1289
Disable OLRMAP option for TLOGS in Backup Templates. LS-1296
Backup wizard no longer ignores "Use SSL" setting for Microsoft Azure. LS-1340

In LiteSpeed 8.7.1

The following is a list of issues addressed in release 8.7.1

Table 2: Core issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Corrected a problem where Log shipping calls to check memory should not crash server or consume up server resources. LS-1127
Corrected a problem behind a Delete File error on backup to Google Storage for files containing special symbols, slashes or spaces including files in subfolders. LS-1320
With tlog backups, changed the default setting for the option "Optimize Object Level Recovery speed" to off as in some cases there is more difficulty with its usage than profit. LS-1222
Corrected a display problem, when a backup or restore verify ran for a longer period of time it showed up in the console as failed but was still running in the background. LS-1027
Litepseed now sets maximum striping/CloudPartSize values for backups to cloud databases that cannot be read. LS-1262
The LiteSpeed activity page now records successful and failed fast compression backups. LS-1220
Fast Compression now shows all messages in the logs, not just messages from the last database. LS-1218
Fast Compression backups no longer backup databases in STANDBY mode. LS-1236
OLR is now able to execute requests to process more than 200 TLOG bakcups. LS-1030 CSR 4369943
LiteSpeed now locks backup files during regular backup full / differential / TLOG / fast compression. LS-1194
LiteSpeed now includes logging and retries into the CloudProxy where it checks for bucket existence and requests a bucket's region LS-1161

 

In LiteSpeed 8.7

The following is a list of issues addressed in release 8.7

Table 3: Core issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
The Instance configuration wizard now allows you to edit the instance name at the SQL Instances step. Ctrl+Left Click on an empty place near the "use the same login ..." check box.

LS-552

When the console is setup to use "central" view, refresh now correctly updates the list of registered SQL Servers. LS-570
Automated restore now reports the correct message for a dropped database.. LS-576
The Database tab at the instance level now shows the last backup for all databases. LS-580
LiteSpeed Core is now able to correctly read files with non-standard sector sizes from storage. LS-643
LiteSpeed now handles license information from old license types (License types used by LiteSpeed versions prior to 8.6).

LS-646

LS-647

LS-649

LS-780

Instance configuration now allows the SQL name to include a port number.

LS-656

Multi-database Fast Compression now correctly works with the %DATABASENAME% parameter. LS-708
Maintenance Plans can now run backups without an additional call to xp_restore_headeronly LS-721
On upgrade LiteSpeed is now able to correctly handle the old license type (License types used by LiteSpeed versions prior to 8.6). LS-780

Corrected an issue where Automated Restore ran with no results.

LS-819
Symbol "]" is now allowed in the database name in backup Maintenance Plans. LS-823
Symbol "{" is now allowed in OLR scripts.. LS-845
“Always on availability group” options are now disabled when "System Databases" is selected in Maintenance Plans. LS-854
Remote Deploy now supports TLS 1.2 automated provider selection. LS-855
Backup Template jobs now produce an error when the backup path option is selected and not used. LS-871
LiteSpeed Core now works correctly on receipt of unexpected errors from the SQL Server. LS-890
Browsing for a backup location on windows 2016 no longer results the error "Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow." LS-904
The LiteSpeed Console now reports the server as registered when the native Log Shipping plan includes a server port number in "name". LS-186
The Log Shipping wizard now uses the port number of a registered SQL Server instance. LS-897
Fast Compression smart cleanup tasks are now able to delete files in the case of locked files.

LS-903

LS-820

In LiteSpeed 8.6.1

The following is a list of issues addressed in release 8.6.1.

Table 4: Core issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID

Handling of the error “The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process” in maintenance plans has been improved.

LS-721
Fast Compression backup for multiple databases now supports the %DATABASENAME% variable. LS-708
LiteSpeed core work with different drive sector sizes has been improved. LS-643, LS-649
Smart cleanup is able to work with a larger number of files now. LS-644

License verification is now optimized for old format keys (prior to version 8.6).

LS-646, LS-647
The Instance Configuration Wizard now allows you to set a port number for SQL Server instances on non-standard ports. LS-656

 

In LiteSpeed 8.6.0

The following is a list of issues addressed in release 8.6.0.

Table 5: Core issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Errors "Database 'name' is invalid: not found" may occur during smart cleanup process on fast computers LS-293
Cloud buckets browsing may fail with error "List of Objects in cloud exception: The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found" in case of a lot of cloud objects LS-369
Automated restore does not show error in case of drop database operation fail LS-207
Automated restore may fail drop database if the database in use by other connection LS-214
Backups executed with depreciating @LSECompatible=1 parameter can't be restored. LS-323
Backup performance slow due to the running of unneeded T SQL statement. LS-384
Automated restore changes file names and extension for secondary data files LS-483
Backup of AG secondary replica fails if the replica is not set to be readable. LS-498

Table 6: Log Reader issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Log reader may fail when reading large log files because it could not use all available RAM on the machine LS-6

Table 7: OLR issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
OLR should support sparse columns LS-258

Table 8: Job Manager issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Job Manager may raise an error in case of adding job step to a job. LS-446

Table 9: Backup Template issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Template deployment may move registered instances to the "unregistered instances" category LS-448

Table 10: Console issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
The user interface console displays an incorrect message if the central repository instance is setup with a port number LS-503

Table 11: Maintenance Plan issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Maintenance plans create but do not drop temp tables. LS-516
Maintenance plans may fail with error "Access violation at address 00511475 in module 'slssqlmaint.exe'. Read of address 7FFD5DF6" during fast compression with smart cleanup plan execution in some cases. LS-521

 

In LiteSpeed 8.5

The following is a list of issues addressed in release 8.5.

Table 12: Backup and Restore resolved issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Performance issue related to mirrored backups resolved 115926
Issue with hanging backups on high load systems resolved 119546 119800
LiteSpeed install on windows 2012/2016 servers does not need NET 3.5 any more 119868
“Provider” parameter added to LS Core ini file 119658

Table 13: Fast Compression resolved issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Number of threads from LiteSpeed defaults correctly applied in Fast Compression 119711
Escalation events do not raise error status for backup 119780
Fast Compression can figure out special cases caused by SmartCleanup 119735

Table 14: Remote Deploy resolved issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Remote deploy wizard opens normally on all systems 119799

Table 15: OLR resolved issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Filtered Index is supported 119598
NTEXT,TEXT, IMAGE types can be restored via Direct Mode 119724

Table 16: Maintenance plans resolved issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
Maintenance plan reports can be emailed in all cases 119476
Striped backups can be deleted from cloud with “delete files older then” option 119689

Table 17: Instance Configuration Wizard resolved issues

Resolved Issue Issue ID
AlwaysOn Group listener can be used for the central repository connection 119600 119596
Self Service Tools
Knowledge Base
Notifications & Alerts
Product Support
Software Downloads
Technical Documentation
User Forums
Video Tutorials
RSS Feed
Contact Us
Licensing Assistance
Technical Support
View All
Related Documents

The document was helpful.

Select Rating

I easily found the information I needed.

Select Rating