Altaro VM Backups V9 released

 New Features

Introduces Ransomware Protection on offsite cloud storage locations. Leveraging immutable storage policies on Wasabi and Amazon S3, backups can be written in a WORM (Write Once Read Many) state for a set amount of time, thus ensuring that backup versions cannot be deleted or altered.

The immutable policy is defined while setting up the offsite cloud location within VM Backup to any duration that is required.

Block-level immutability allows for old data blocks to be removed safely in order to eliminate any unnecessary cloud storage costs.

Introduces new visual queues and notifications in case where any backup version exceeds its defined immutable policy and is thus no longer protected against ransomware.

Introduces a brand new backup repository for onsite (primary), offsite (including copies taken to the Offsite Backup Server), and cloud storage accounts. The VM Backup deduplicated repository has been rebuilt from the ground up to be highly scalable, robust, and makes optimum use of disk space.

Includes a new optimized data storage mechanism that allows for unused data blocks to be freed from the storage repository and reclaim storage space whenever possible.

Introduces concurrent data clean-up operations (retention) that can now run in parallel with any other onsite and offsite backups, as well as restore operations.

The Local Management Console will no longer enter maintenance mode when running retention clean-up on offsite backup locations.

Backup Health Monitor can now run silently in the background in parallel and without interrupting any ongoing continuous backup operations (CDP), scheduled backup and restore operations. This allows users to constantly scan for any data integrity issues and be alerted when required.

Adds support for VMware vSphere and vCenter v8 hypervisors.

Adds support for VMs that are configured with Fault Tolerance feature on VMware hosts

Supports installing the VM Backup management console on Windows 11 operating system.

Improves VM Backup management console performance when managing large-scale infrastructure setups.

Features an upgrade wizard which runs automatically when V9 is first installed and launched. This provides all the necessary information to the user and allows you to choose to migrate all configuration and settings from VM Backup v8 or to start a fresh new configuration.

Allows the Offsite Backup Server v9 to run concurrently with the Altaro Offsite Server v8

Operation History can now be exported via REST API

Adds support for AP-Southeast-2 region on Wasabi Cloud Storage

Changes that are need for updating

Older backup data, taken by V8, will not be deleted automatically, so once you have taken enough backups with V9, you can delete the older sets manually from the backup location.

AV Exclusions

• all onsite backup drive directories

• all offsite backup drive directories

• C:\ProgramData\Hornetsecurity on the Management and on the Hyper-V hosts

• C:\Program Files\Hornetsecurity on the Management and on the Hyper-V hosts

Offsite New Default ports

• TCP 36000
• TCP 36001
• TCP 36100

VM Application aware back up fails on a 2012 R2 DC Guest (Event Id: 8229 VSS seen on Guest) on a 2016 host

This one was odd and I don't have the full history but got passed a call were Altaro was warning that an application aware backup was not possible and it was falling back to crash consistent.  As it was a DC server ideally it should be application aware.

The DC was Windows 2012 R2 running on 2016 Hyper-V server.  All the settings looked good and running Windows backup within the guest was able to backup with no issues.

Every time Altaro tried to take a back up with application the guest logged an event with id 8229 and an error code of 0x800423f4.

This appears to be an issue with the integrated servers triggering the backup within the guest and has an update that resolves the issue.  Has to be installed on the guest.

KB5001088: "BackupComplete" event message is not received when backing up Windows Server 2012 or Server 2012 R2 VMs residing on Windows Server 2016 or Server 2019 host (microsoft.com)

Altaro Agent on Host server is not upgrading / going to retry upgrade / getting stuck in a loop of upgrade

If you have upgraded the backup server for Altaro and are trying to roll up the upgraded agent too the hosts.  You may find your self stuck in a loop of upgrading or retrying.

Go to "C:\ProgramData\Altaro\AltaroBackupProfile" on both the host and the backup server and delete the folder called "Installer"

Then try to roll the upgrade out again.

Identifying Altaro Offsite Media by Volume ID

Altaro assigns removable media by its volume ID, you can see this if you edit the list within Altaro for the removable media.

To see if the media that is currently in the drive is already in the list you have to do the following. 

1. Open CMD

2. Switch to the drive you wish to get the ID from

3. Type "vol" and press return.

You will then see something like the below in the command prompt.,  the Volume Serial number should be listed in Altaro Media removeable media list too.