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vRanger 7.6.4 - Release Notes

Quest® vRanger® 7.6.4

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Quest® vRanger® 7.6.4

October 2017

These release notes provide information about the Quest® vRanger® release.

About this release

vRanger Backup & Replication is the market-leading backup, recovery, and backup-management solution for VMware® and Hyper-V® virtual environments. vRanger automatically discovers new virtual machines (VMs), reduces backup windows, provides smarter backup options, and offers more scalability through its agent-less architecture and features while using fewer resources.

vRanger capabilities:

vRanger 7.6.4 is a maintenance release with minor enhancements related to product rebranding. See Enhancements and Resolved issues for more detailed information.

Enhancements

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Enhancements

The following is a list of enhancements implemented in vRanger 7.6.4.

Table 1. General enhancements

Enhancement

Final rebranding with respect to NetVault SmartDIsk integration

Final rebranding with respect to Quest RDA integration

Resolved issues

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Resolved issues

There are no customer-facing defects resolved in this release.

Known issues

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Known issues

The following is a list of issues, including those issues attributed to third-party products, known to exist at the time of release.

Table 2. Installation known issues

Known issue

Issue ID

The vRanger Service does not start after installing vRanger on WIndows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

 

Workaround:

When installing vRanger on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, the Windows Management Framework 3.0 must also be installed in order for the vRanger Service to run. Options for installing WMF 3.0 are:

VR-177

When installing vRanger with the embedded database on Windows Server 2016, the installation may freeze due to a Microsoft issue with installing SQL Server R2 Express on Windows Server 2016.

VR-459

When installing or upgrading vRanger on a Micrsoft Windows 2012 R2 Server, the vRanger GUI may fail to launch with following error:

“FileNotFoundException. Could not load file or assembly 'Vizioncore.vRanger.FLR.dll' or one of its dependencies. The specified module could not be found.”

 

Workaround:

This issue is caused by a corrupted Visual C++ 14.0 installation on the installation server. To resolve this issue

 

If the Quest vRanger Service is installed with a user other than the currently logged in user, use mixed-mode authentication for SQL Server® and authenticate with the system administrator (sa) user.

Alternatively, Windows®-only authentication can be used if the following workaround is implemented.

Workaround:

3
Replace VRANGER\vRangerServiceUser with the name of the vRanger service user in the following command:

vRanger is able to connect to the service.

17210

If you did not remove the vRanger database during a vRanger uninstall, you must use the same credentials as the original install or grant rights to the database for the new user when reinstalling vRanger.

17705

vRanger is available in three versions: vRanger Standard Edition (SE), vRanger Backup & Replication, and vReplicator. Only one version of vRanger can be licensed on a machine at any one time. For example, you cannot license vRanger SE and vReplicator on the same machine.

 

When vRanger is installed on Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012, using the Uninstall icon to remove the application fails unless the uninstall is performed using the Administrator role.

Workaround 1:

3
Right-click in an empty space on the Start screen, and select All Apps.
5
Look for the Uninstall tile above the vRanger Backup & Replication tile.
6
Right-click the Uninstall tile, and select Run as Administrator.

The uninstall starts as it normally does.

Workaround 2:

You may also uninstall vRanger using the Programs and Features application in the Control Panel.

15470

When a proxy server is configured on the vRanger machine, vRanger may not be able to connect to VMware® vCenter™ Servers or NetVault SmartDisk repositories.

Workaround:

If you are unsure what the account is, use Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to check the services.msc file.

2
Open Internet Explorer® (IE) while logged-in with the account.
3
Go to Internet Options > Connections > LAN settings; this location varies depending on the version of IE installed on the machine.
4
Make sure that no proxy information is defined, and no proxy server is being used.
5
Clear the automatically detect settings check box, in case your particular environment has an automatic proxy script set up.

 

During an upgrade, the vRanger Upgrade Installer might not delete the previous vRanger Pro Service event log. This exclusion causes the vRanger user interface (UI) to hang and display a “Could not connect to the service” message after the upgrade. To remove the log manually, complete the following steps:

Workaround:

1
Disable the Event Log service.
3
From the vRanger machine’s %SystemRoot%\System32\Config folder, delete the vRanger *.evt file.
5
Restart the Event Log service.

13623

When the Quest vRanger Service is configured for a delayed start, and the vRanger Upgrade Installer is run before the existing Quest vRanger Service has started, the upgrade fails when the Quest vRanger Service starts.

Workaround:

Wait until the Quest vRanger Service starts to perform an upgrade. The vRanger Upgrade Installer stops the service if it is running.

13687

If vRanger is installed using a local admin account, and that account is changed after vRanger is uninstalled, you must use SQL Server authentication for the database installer for both vRanger and Cataloging when you reinstall vRanger.

If the second local admin account does not have access to the database, grant that account administrator access to the SQL Server instance before installation.

16034

Table 3. General known issues

Known issue

Issue ID

Domain controller and domain authentication issues can cause errors such as:

VM backups encounter 2129 Can’t Write errors to CIFS repositories with any transport type.
Physical machine backups encounter 2129 Can’t Write errors to CIFS repositories.
Virtual appliance (VA) backups fail with 2129 Can’t Write errors to CIFS repositories.
Physical machine shows as Disconnected in Inventory.

Workaround:

The following lists some common situations that can cause these issues:

15187

Paths for Common Internet File System (CIFS) repositories are case-sensitive. When configuring a CIFS repository, ensure that the path for the repository is entered in the correct case.

15468

When configuring repository connections, the credentials used cannot contain an asterisk (*) or a question mark (?)

17273

When a Backup Group contains two Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 VMs that are clones of each other, and that group is backed up using HotAdd, only one of the cloned machines restores properly.

15112

Refreshing Windows Disk Management on the vRanger VM may cause a HotAdd backup to fail over to a network backup.

12302

When vRanger is installed on a VM that contains two paravirtualized (PVSCSI) controllers, mounting of paravirtual volumes by using HotAdd fail, causing vRanger to continue operations using the configured failover method — network for backup, or the configured transport failover option for replication.

Workaround:

Often, one of the PVSCSI controllers is empty and can be safely removed. Removing this second, empty controller from the vRanger machine allows HotAdd operations to process normally.

 

During periods of heavy activity on the vRanger machine, HotAdd backup tasks may fail over to LAN backups with the following message. Sometimes, the LAN backups fail with the same error.

These errors can be caused by excessive resource contention, which causes vRanger message queues to become out of synch.

Workaround 1:

To avoid task timeout errors, schedule jobs to avoid excessive resource contention on the vRanger machine.

Workaround 2:

If rescheduling jobs is not an option, you may increase the timeout value to allow the vRanger message queues to recover from issues caused by resource contention. To change the timeout value:

By default, this directory is C:\Program Files\Quest\vRanger.

2
Open the Vizioncore.vRanger.Service.exe.config file in Notepad.
3
Search the file for CommitTimeout, and change the timeout value to 450.
5
Restart the Quest vRanger Service to implement the changes.

 

Backup jobs for Hyper-V® Servers are shown twice in the Backup Job Summary Report.

16907

When the vCenter User credentials are changed, the change does not take full effect until the Quest vRanger Service is restarted.

17038

In some circumstances, Changed Block Tracking (CBT) does not show as enabled for some VMs in the vRanger inventory. This issue is due to an error described in VMware KB article 2075984.

Workaround:

To resolve this issue, perform the workaround documented in VMware KB article 2075984.

17528

When creating Hyper-V virtual machines, avoid using special characters. The [ ] (square brackets) and ‘ (backtick) specifically should not be used.

 

Table 4. Backup known issues

Known issue

Issue ID

VA-based Hot add backups fail with Error: -1 - An unknown error has occurred.

The following error will also appear in the Support logs:

“mkdir: cannot create directory '/var/tmp/vix/dd57d1da-22ee-4a9b-9988-310e8b608c3f': Read-only file system”

Workaround:

The error is caused by the ext4 root file system being mounted as read-only. Reboot the VA and re-run the job.

VR-489

When performing SAN backups of VMs created in VMware® vCloud Director® from a template, the backup may fail with the “Error: 2760 - <VIXcannotOpenDetails> VIX can’t open…” error.

The VMware SAN mode transport searches for VMs by BIOS UUID. By default, all instances and VMs that are deployed from a given catalog vApps/template in vCloud Director are assigned the same BIOS UUID. For more information, see VMware KB article 1002403.

Workaround:

To resolve this issue, perform the workaround documented in VMware KB article 2002506.

17591

When performing a quiesced backup of a Windows Server 2012 VM without using vzShadow.exe, event log errors are generated for System Reserved volumes during snapshot creation.

14130

The VMware QueryChangedDiskAreas API returns incorrect sectors after extending the VM VMDK file with CBT enabled. This issue causes the CBT filter to become invalid, possibly corrupting vRanger backups. For more information, see VMware KB article 2090639.

Workaround:

Ensure that the patches described in VMware KB article 2090639 are applied, and follow other workaround recommendations documented in the KB as appropriate for your environment.

 

When using the vzShadow.exe executable to perform application-consistent backups, lettered drives are required. The use of vzShadow.exe to quiesce mount points with databases is not supported.

 

When backing up Windows Server 2008 R2 VMs with multiple disks, and the Enable Guest Quiescing option is selected, some backup tasks may fail with the “API Call failed with message: A general system error occurred: Protocol error from VMX” error.

Workaround:

For options to resolve this issue, see VMware KB article 1037071.

 

When performing full backups with CBT enabled, the CBT operation may fail with the “Change Block Tracking not enabled on <disk>” error. When performing incremental or differential backups of the same VMs, CBT functions properly.

The following scenarios have been shown to cause this error, although not in all cases:

VMware® ESXi™ host crash
Storage vMotion® of the VM — while powered off

Workaround 1:

Sometimes, performing the following steps resolves this issue.

Workaround 2:

Sometimes, deleting the *ctk.vmdk file for each disk in the affected VM resolves this issue.

 

Table 5. Restore and file-level restore (FLR) known issues

Known issue

Issue ID

When restoring a VM that had an ISO connected when the VM was backed up, the restored VM does not have the ISO connected.

Workaround:

To ensure that ISO images are attached to a VM when restored:

Change the VM settings to set the StartConnected value of the CD-ROM-image device to True.
Ensure that the restore job option Force Power On is enabled.

8366

Some restore tasks fail with the “Error: Restore command exited unexpectedly” error.

This issue is caused by a known issue with the VMware VDDK titled “Possible segmentation violation if running multiple backup processes.” For more information, see the VMware VDDK 5.0 Release Notes.

15348

When a standalone ESXi 5 host is added to the vRanger inventory, and that Host is associated with a vSphere® 5 vCenter that is not in the vRanger inventory, restore operations to that host fail with the error:

<host> is being managed by a Virtual Center. Please disassociate the host from the Virtual Center before continuing a Restore operation or register the Virtual Center in vRanger.”

Association is a new relationship introduced in vSphere 5, whereby some host resources are managed only by an associated vCenter, and not the host itself. The Host, therefore, does not have permission to perform the operations required to restore a VM. If the vCenter is not in the vRanger inventory, vRanger cannot obtain the required permissions.

Workaround:

Either disassociate — disconnecting is insufficient — the host from the vCenter, or register the vCenter in vRanger.

 

If you are connected to the vRanger machine using RDP when installing vRanger, some vRanger components required for FLR may be installed in an unexpected location, causing them to be unavailable when requested by vRanger. This issue causes FLR tasks to freeze while displaying “Loading …”

Workaround:

If this issue occurs, log out of your RDP session — do not simply exit — and reconnect. vRanger reinstalls the required tools.

 

When performing a Linux® FLR operation that recovers files and folders with the following characters in the name, the files and folders are displayed with what look to be randomly generated names, and are restored successfully with same random names. Characters that cause this behavior are:

\ : * " ? < > |

 

FLR from a Windows Server 2012 VM, the contents of the mounted disk are not displayed.

Workaround:

To perform an FLR for a Windows Server 2012, install vRanger on Windows Server 2012.

14131

Windows systems often contain a Microsoft-created hidden partition that is not visible through the Disk Management snap-in. When vRanger catalogs the disk containing this hidden partition, it attempts to catalog this partition and may fail, as the partition is often not formatted with NTFS. vRanger generates a failure message in the log files for this partition which may cause confusion, as this partition is often not known to exist.

 

The vRanger cataloging feature does not support operation against dynamic disks.

13755

Table 6. Physical backup and restore known issues

Known issue

Issue ID

The vRanger Restore CD is not compatible with UEFI. Physical target servers booting into UEFI will not boot the Restore CD.

Workaround:

To restore a backup to a physical server booting into UEFI, change the boot mode to BIOS. To do so, follow the steps below:

VR-422

Physical backup of Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 machines may fail with the “Failed to create VSS snapshot (P_VSSUTIL_WRITER_ERR)” message. This issue is often due to a VSS timeout caused by resource contention on the source server.

Workaround:

If possible, adjust the backup schedule so that the backup is performed during a period of lower resource consumption.

16589

If the disk hardware is changed between physical backup or restore tasks, the job should be updated to reflect such changes to ensure that the intended disks are included. In some instances, rebooting the target server causes disks to change IDs — see Microsoft article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb968801(v=vs.85).aspx. This change to the IDs results in a machine whose effective hardware has changed.

14369

When deploying the vRanger physical client to a physical server, the account used to install and run the client must have administrative Log on as a service rights. If this computer is a node in a cluster, check that this user right is assigned to the Cluster service account on all nodes in the cluster.

If you have already assigned this user right to the service account, and the user right appears to be removed, a Group Policy object associated with this node might be removing the right. Check with your domain administrator to find out if this issue is happening.

For instructions, see the Microsoft TechNet article Add the Log on as a service right to an account.

15278

If a repository was created using the vAPI, and the path to the repository was entered using backward slashes instead of forward slashes, restoring a physical server savepoint fails with the “Error: 2630 - can’t find uuid” error.

Workaround:

When configuring repositories using the vAPI, use forward slashes.

15409

The use of dynamic disks are not supported for physical backup. If a physical backup task is performed on a source server containing dynamic disks, the task fails with the “Value cannot be null” message.

14470

Adding a physical source server to vRanger inventory sometimes fails with the “The RPC server is unavailable” error.

Workaround:

If this error is observed, perform the following actions:

1
On the source server, open the Windows firewall, and select Change Settings. In the Exception tab, select Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).
2
On the source server, verify that the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service is started and set to Automatic.
3
On the source server, verify that the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service is started and set to Automatic.

 

When uninstalling the vRanger Physical Client, the following files are not removed from the physical client installation directory —C:\Program Files\Quest\vRangerPhysicalClient by default.

Workaround:

You may remove these files manually.

14554

When restoring to a physical server, vRanger does not lock the source or savepoint. This behavior potentially allows the un-supported practice of creating two simultaneous restore tasks to the same server.

Workaround:

Ensure that you only configure one restore task per server.

14507

When performing physical backups of an Exchange 2010 server, the task fails with the “Failed to create VSS snapshot on the target machine (P_VSSUTIL_WRITER_ERR)” error.

Workaround:

To protect Exchange 2010 with physical backups, install Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 on the source server.

14426

When performing physical backups, backup tasks intermittently fail with the “Failed to create VSS snapshot on the target machine (P_VSSUTIL_UNEXPECTED)” error.

Workaround:

When this problem occurs, log in to the affected source server and restart the Quest Physical Client service.

14711

Sometimes the “The RPC server is unavailable. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA)” error is encountered while adding a physical machine to vRanger.

14639

When performing physical backups, if the credentials used for authenticating to the source server are changed without updating vRanger, subsequent backup tasks fail with the “Failed to acquire shared resources (Unable to connect to the backup destination.) Failed to connect to the backup destination” error. When this issue occurs, update the credentials in vRanger.

14712

Table 7. Replication known issues

Known issue

Issue ID

Replication to a target containing vRDM disks is not supported.

16612

When a standalone ESXi host is added to the vRanger inventory, and that Host is associated with a vSphere vCenter not in the vRanger inventory, replication operations to that host fail with the error:

<host> is being managed by a Virtual Center. Please disassociate the host from the Virtual Center before continuing a replication operation or register the Virtual Center in vRanger.”

Association is a relationship introduced in vSphere 5, whereby some host resources are managed only by an associated vCenter, and not the host itself. The Host, therefore, does not have permission to perform the operations required to replicate a VM. If the vCenter is not in the vRanger inventory, vRanger cannot obtain the required permissions.

Workaround:

Either disassociate — do not simply disconnect — the host from the vCenter, or register the vCenter in vRanger.

 

When performing a failover operation, without synchronizing changes, and the source host is unavailable, the failover task fails and you must manually perform the failover.

Workaround:

A failover operation performs two key tasks that need to be performed manually if the operation fails: powering on the destination VM, and reversing the direction of replication to ensure that changes to the destination VM are captured when operation reverts to the production site. To replicate a failover task manually, perform the following steps:

The next replication pass should be successful.

 

When performing a replication task after upgrading the source VM from HW version 4 to HW version 7 or 8, the task may appear to hang, and fail with the “The operation has timed out” message. In this situation, vRanger upgrades the HW version of the replica VM, which triggers a vSphere prompt to update the VMware Tools on the replica VM.

Workaround:

In the vSphere Client, select Continue with the VM Upgrade for the replica VM.

13817

Replication with the VA fails if the following characters are used when authenticating a vCenter connection in vRanger:

| \ / “ ‘ : ; < > , ? [ ] + = *

Workaround:

Do not use the preceding characters in the username or password used to authenticate to vCenter.

 

When replicating a VM with a name containing a space in front of a bracket, “ [,” the replication task hangs at 12%.

12163

Table 8. Virtual appliance (VA) known issues

Known issue

Issue ID

When editing an existing VA, changing both the datastore and scratch disk size for a VA fails with an error.

Workaround:

Change either option individually.

16838

Deploying a VA to a standalone host fails if the host is managed by a vCenter.

16792

When deploying the vRanger VA using the Virtual Appliance Deployment Wizard, only one VA is allowed per host.

If a second VA deployment is attempted, the VA Deployment Wizard does not let you deploy a VA to a host that has an existing VA.

13606

When creating a VA with the Install-VirtualAppliance vAPI cmdlet, enabling the VADeployStatus parameter may cause failures when used with multiple VAs.

Workaround:

When deploying more than three VAs with the vAPI cmdlets, use the Get-VirtualApplianceDeploymentStatus cmdlet to retrieve the status.

13834

In some environments, it may be necessary for a customer to add a second network interface card (NIC) to the vRanger VA.

4
Run the command: dmesg | grep "rename.*eth"

You see two messages indicating the renaming of the real NICs with new Udev NIC names.

6
Run the command: cd /etc/sysconfig

This directory already contains one configuration file for the first NIC.

vi ifconfig.<IFname>

== For DHCP (SAMPLE NIC Interface Name):

ONBOOT=yes

SERVICE=dhcpcd

IFACE=enps2

DHCP_STOP="-k"

PRINTIP=yes

PRINTALL=no

 

== For Static (SAMPLE NIC Interface Name & IP Addresses):

ONBOOT=yes

SERVICE=ipv4-static

IFACE=enps2

IP=192.168.1.1

GATEWAY=192.168.1.254

PREFIX=24

9

 

Table 9. Third-party known issues

Known issue

Issue ID

vSphere 5 introduces the vStorage APIs VixDiskLib_PrepareForAccess() and VixDiskLib_EndAccess() to lock and unlock migration for individual VMs. It is observed that on occasion the VixDiskLib_EndAccess fails to unlock the VM and, as a result, that VM is left in a state where vMotion is permanently disabled.

Workaround:

Follow the steps documented in the VMware KB article 2008957.

13619

Due to a VMware limitation — as documented in the vSphere 5 Documentation — vRanger cannot support operations against datastores with names containing the characters forward slash (/), backward slash (\), and percent (%).

13840

13841

The use of non-standard US-English ASCII characters in certain VM parameters can cause unexpected behavior to occur. For more information, see VMware KB article 1003866.

 

When special characters are used in a file or folder name, you cannot see that file or folder when browsing the datastore in vCenter. This issue is documented in more detail in the VMware KB article 1015650.

 

If the host name of a vCenter server contains a character that Tomcat does not support, retrieving health data fails with the “Unable to retrieve health data from <server>…” error. This error occurs because Tomcat requires that host names are RFC 952 complaint. For more information, see VMware KB article 1013507.

 

Cloning a custom Linux VM fails if the VMs computer name contains Extended-ASCII or non-ASCII characters. For more information, see VMware KB article 2004390.

 

When creating a Hyper-V backup job, mixing VMs with Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) and non-CSV volumes is not supported. For more information, see Microsoft KB article 2771882.

 

When creating or running a backup job, the operation fails with the “Error: 2760 - <VIXcannotOpenDetails> VIX can’t open [XXXXX] XXXX/XXX.vmdk (The host is not licensed for this feature)” error.

Workaround:

To resolve this issue, remove the vSphere license and then add it back.

17102

In some cases, VMware backup jobs may fail with the error “Error: -1 Backup process had an unexpected failure”. This is a known issue as documented in VMware KB article 2125497 and the VMware VDDK 6.0 Release Notes.

Workaround:

This issue is believed to be a problem with enabling IPv6 on more than one NIC. To resolve this issue, disable IPv6 on the vRanger machine.

17965

 

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