Release Notes for Veeam Backup & Replication 10a

Veeam Backup & Replication 10a is the newer build of version 10 that addresses issues reported by customers on the original build, and adds the following new features and enhancements:

Fully integrated AWS-native backup
AWS data protection is now built directly in to the Veeam Backup & Replication console. This requires installing AWS Plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication (separate download). For more information, please refer to KB3239

Platform support

• Microsoft Windows 10 version 2004 and Microsoft Windows Server SAC version 2004 support as guest OS, as Hyper-V servers, for the installation of Veeam Backup & Replication components, and for agent-based backup with the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 4.0.1 (included in the update).
• Linux Kernel version 5.7 support for guest VMs, for the installation of Veeam Backup & Replication components, and for agent-based backup with the Veeam Agent for Linux 4.0.1 (included in the update).
• RHEL 8.2, CentOS 8.2, Oracle Linux 8.2 (RHCK) and VMware Photon OS support for guest processing functionality in host-based backup jobs.
• RHEL 8.2, CentOS 8.2, Oracle Linux 8.2 (RHCK), Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 10.4, openSUSE Leap 15.2, Oracle Linux 8 (up to UEK R6) and Fedora 32 (up to kernel 5.7.7) distributions support in the Veeam Backup & Replication agent management functionality.
• VMware vCloud Director 10.1 support and better handling of deployments without network access to vCD cells.
• Recent Azure Stack versions support. Please refer to the documentation for additional registry settings required depending on your version.

NAS backup

• Azure File Sync support with cloud tiering awareness for file backup jobs. Processing a file share with Azure File Sync enabled will now correctly back up files not present in the local cache. Such files will be backed up directly from Azure, without downloading them back to the file server.

Restore

• Direct restore to Microsoft Azure performance has been improved up to a few times depending on the backup location. This requires re-deploying the Azure Proxy using the new default instance type suggested by the Azure proxy wizard.
• Microsoft Exchange 2019 MetaCacheDatabase (MCDB) configurations support in Veeam Explorer for Exchange.

Storage integrations

• Amazon Snowball Edge support for the scale-out backup repository Capacity Tier, including full user interface integration.
• Dell EMC Data Domain Boost SDK was updated to version 3.4 due to the important bug fix around interface groups that affects DD OS version 7.1. As a result of this change, the minimum supported DD OS version is now 6.0.
• HPE Primera OS version 4.2 support.
• ReFS integration: based on the recommendation from Microsoft, RefsEnableLargeWorkingSetTrim registry value is now automatically set upon the creation of a Windows Server 2019 based backup repository.

Licensing

• Free file backup for small data sets. Early NAS backup adopters have shared with us an unexpected use case for this functionality: file-level backup from machines already protected with an image-level backup job, in order to have an additional copy of a few most important files stored in a different backup format. We decided to make this use case free by allowing to protect the first 250GB of data from any file source at no cost. To achieve this, v10a will only consume a license for each full 250GB set of data protected, whereas v10 consumed a license for incomplete 250GB sets as well.
• File version archiving option of NAS backup is now available regardless of the Socket license edition when backup servers has both Socket and VUL license installed (previously, this feature required the Enterprise Plus edition).
• Perpetual VUL. Based on requests from customers who are required by policies and regulations to purchase perpetual software licenses, we made Veeam Universal License (VUL) available also with the Perpetual contract. However, Subscription remains a significantly more economically attractive option.

In addition, version 10a introduces over 1200 minor enhancements and fixes based on our v10 customers feedback, most significant of which are listed below.

• Object storage: increased performance of downloading backups from the Capacity Tier by 50%; increased restore performance from backups in object storage up to a few times depending on restore scenario; under-the-hood reliability enhancements for better handling of unusual situations.
• NAS backup: multiple bugs were fixed around corner cases based on support cases from early adopters. Please note that the first run of file backup and backup copy jobs after upgrading to 10a may take longer due to the metadata health check, to ensure your NAS backups do not suffer from the addressed issues.
• SQL Server transaction log backups: fixed a bug in log retention logic for Always On database log backup that may result in data loss due to deleting an incorrect log backup; improved SQL log backup metadata generation performance.
• Application plug-ins: large number of core engine improvements to increase plug-in jobs performance and scalability and reduce configuration database load; removed conflicts between storage snapshot only jobs and plug-in jobs.
• Instant recovery: instant restore of Veeam Agent for Linux backups will now set original CPU and RAM settings for the provisioned VM.
• File level recovery: reliability improvements in a number of corner cases; mount servers with the File Server Resource Manager role enabled should no longer leave image files behind in their file system.
• Backup copy jobs in the immediate mode: added support for replication from backups created from backup copy jobs; removed re-transfers of already copied backups for backup chains with transform to rollback option enabled.
• Tape: backup to tape jobs should no longer skip processing agent-based backups created by backup copy jobs in the immediate copy mode and transformed synthetic full backups; email report should again show used tapes; file to tape jobs should no longer fail to enumerate large NFS v3 shares
• Scale-out backup repository: improved evacuate performance; removed periodic extent status scans when there’s no active tasks requiring the given extent, not to prevent storage devices from going into sleep.
• Resource scheduler: added backup infrastructure resource status caching and optimized configuration database queries to accelerate resource assignment and reduce configuration database load.
• UI: multiple fixes and enhancements to improve UI responsiveness, reduce backup server resource usage and configuration database load; multiple improvements in Veeam Agent for Unix integration.

This update also includes all fixes from Cumulative Patch 1 and Cumulative Patch 2 for v10, and supersedes those patches.