Itzikr's Blog

A guest post by Damian Erangey

PowerProtect Data Manager 19.13 has recently been released and comes with several new features, enhancements and stability improvements. which you can read about here

There’s certainly something for everyone here. Here are 10 key highlights. Some of which we’ll be covering more in-depth in later posts.

Security

1. MFA Support for PPDM

PPDM now supports RSA SecurID for token-based multi-factor authentication (MFA). This provides additional layers of challenge beyond usernames and passwords to guard against the risk of stolen credentials.

MFA Logon Screen

2. Encryption in-flight for virtual machine workloads

PPDM now supports encryption in-flight for VMware virtual machine workloads.

Restore Functionality

Ability to restore machines to a different vCenter server, restoring virtual machine BIOS UUIDs, and restoring individual VMDKs to an alternate virtual machine on the same or a different vCenter server.

3. File Level Search and Restore

UI improvements to narrow down search, (indexing needs to be enabled for file search and restore)

Again, more to follow on this in future posts.

4. VM Restore Enhancement – Individual Disk(s)

Ability to provide a more granular restore. PPDM 19.13 can restore individual disks attached to a vm rather than the whole VM.

Restore can overwrite original disk or be restored (mounted) to another VM.

5. Ability to maintain the same BIOS UUID of a restored VM

Certainly there are many use cases where this is important. Software licenses can be based on BIOS UUID, resulting in issues if a vm is restored and the UUID of the BIOS is overwritten. The ability to maintain the BIOS UUID is now supported.

VM Protection

6. Backup and Restore Encrypted VM’s

In terms of protection, PPDM 19.13 supports backing up and restoring encrypted virtual machines using the transparent snapshot data mover (TSDM) mechanism when the installed vSphere version is 8.0b or later.or later.

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7. MSSQL Enhancements and Improvements

•  Microsoft Exchange Server support for Windows Server core deployments
  

The Microsoft Exchange Server application agent can protect Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 assets on Windows Server 2019 and 2022 Server core deployments.

•  Support for MSSQL 2022
  

PPDM 19.13 introduces support for Microsoft SQL Server 2022, including both centralized and self-service Application Direct operations to protect databases. PPDM supports backing up and restoring Microsoft SQL Server 2022 databases through the Microsoft application agent, including table-level restores.

• Hierarchical views for SQL Databases
  

In addition, PPDM 19.13 has enhancements to the PowerProtect Data Manager UI screens for Microsoft SQL Server restore workflows, to improve usability. The UI includes new options for restoring to an original or alternate database and provides both hierarchical and list views for restoring to an alternate database.

• Streamlined Availability Group Backups
  
  • Restore databases to all nodes
    
  • Restore databases to only primary node
    
• UI Improvements – Show job steps for backup and restore
  

8. Oracle Enhancements and Improvements

Oracle Data Guard backup and restore enhancements

It very common in large enterprises customers to deploy critical Oracle databases in high-availability mode or data guard mode.

PPDM 19.13 added support for enhanced Oracle backups and restores in a high-availability Data Guard environment through the PowerProtect Data Manager UI and integrated Oracle RMAN agent workflows.

• Asset Group detects the Data Guard Configuration with primary and standby database information.
  
  • Role of the Database is identified during discovery
    
• Existing list view now display the Data Guard Role and Host type
  

PPDM 19.13 supports Oracle Incremental Merge backups and restores of stand-alone and Oracle RAC systems on Linux.

Oracle Incremental Merge backups and restores Intergraded with PPDM (OIM Agent)

Oracle Incremental Merge backups use Oracle image copy-based technology to create exact copies of data files as “forever incremental” that can be restored and brought online quickly.

This feature was previously available, but it was provided as a standalone feature.

As of PPDM 19.13

• It’s integrated with PPDM utilizing image based native datafile format backups, resulting in faster backups with better dedup and faster recoveries.
  
• Allows for the creation of synthesized full backup at the cost of incremental backup (Forever incremental)
  
• Livemount / Instant Access recovery using protection storage.
  

Networking

9. IPv6 Support for Network Attached Storage

On the networking side, the latest release has added support for IPv6 with network-attached storage.

Linux File System Agent Enhancements

10. Enhanced Mount point support

Starting with version 19.13 PPDM can back up all mounted filesystems (previously only filesystem mounted at /etc/fstab were supported). Discovery, Backup and Retore operations are supported.

Filesystems supported are ext3, ext4 and xfs