Features and enhancements that Commvault wants to highlight in this innovation release are listed here, with a link to full documentation for the feature, if available.
What is an Innovation Release?
11.38 is an Innovation Release, and Innovation Releases are designed for customers who want to be on the cutting edge of advancement in Commvault technology. They are ideal for customers seeking the most recent features and optimizations in their data environments. However, Innovation Releases come with a commitment: By adopting an Innovation Release, customers agree to receive Monthly Update Releases every month. These Monthly Update Releases provide continuous improvements and new capabilities that keep your environment on the cutting edge. For those who prefer a more stable environment, Commvault also offers Long-Term Support (LTS) Releases, recommended for customers seeking minimal change over time.
Important Information about Upgrading to Innovation Release 11.38
A gated process is in place to install or upgrade to 11.38. Customers must first complete the Innovation Release Request Form, available at cloud.commvault.com. This process ensures that all innovation adopters are equipped to take advantage of 11.38’s new features and update cadence. For any support cases related to 11.38, Commvault requires customers to install the most recent Monthly Update Releases before our support team begins investigating any issues. Staying current with Monthly Update Releases is essential for optimizing your experience with the Innovation Release.
Cloud Workload Protection
AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region is now protected
Commvault now supports the protection for supported workloads in the new AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region, also known as ap-southeast-5. Commvault supports deployment to, integration with, and protection of the following AWS services: Amazon Aurora, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), AWS Organizations, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), AWS Security Token Service, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), AWS Systems Manager, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), and VM Import/Export. You can get started today by deploying Commvault from the AWS Marketplace.
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- AWS Regions and Availability Zones Supported for Amazon RDS
- AWS Regions and Availability Zones Supported for Amazon Redshift
- AWS Regions and Availability Zones Supported for Amazon DynamoDB
- Support for AWS Regions and Availability Zones for Amazon EC2 and Amazon VPC
- AWS Regions and Availability Zones Supported for Amazon S3
Automated Amazon EBS and Amazon Machine Image (AMI) Orphaned Resource Cleanup
With this feature, you can automate the identification and deprecation of orphaned Amazon EBS snapshots and Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). Orphaned resources are outdated or unused recovery points held in your AWS accounts that are no longer required by your retention policies. You have the flexibility to automatically monitor and clean up orphaned resources or to perform manual inspection and cleanup.
Removing unused resources helps you reduce your overall monthly spend on Amazon EBS snapshots, resulting in continuous cost savings.
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- Automated AMI and EBS Snapshot Cleanup for Amazon EC2
- Identifying and Deleting Orphaned Amazon EC2 AMIs and Snapshots
Azure Express Configuration
Now, you can simplify the onboarding process for configuring an Azure virtual machine workload. Sign into your Azure billing account using the Express Configuration wizard and automatically complete all necessary provisioning steps. This seamless experience helps reduce configuration errors and frustration with performing configuration steps in multiple portals.
Configuration enhancements for restoring VMs with extensions
The configuration enhancements for restoring VMs with extensions allow Azure Admins to easily restore VMs with their original extensions. This feature provides flexibility by allowing selective exclusion or reinstallation of extensions at a later time, improving the overall configuration experience for Azure Admins.
CosmosDB (MongoDB): Backup and Recovery
The CosmosDB (MongoDB) feature allows Commvault customers to efficiently secure their Azure CosmosDB for MongoDB data. Not only does it provide cost effective long-term retention when compared with native backups, but it also facilitates both data protection and recovery beyond Azure subscriptions or Cosmos DB accounts.
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Manage credentials for DB2 database backups in Credential Vault
Commvault now supports DB2 database backup using Credential Vault. This allows users to securely store their database and server credentials in one centralized place. This simplifies the configuration and management of these credentials and also improves overall security by protecting sensitive information.
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DB2 User Account Credential Management
Adding a DB2 Database Instance
Protect DynamoDB tables using S3 export method
DynamoDB tables can now be protected using the native S3 export method and restored from a point-in-time backup. This removes front-end DynamoDB costs and eliminates any performance impact to production workloads while performing the backups.
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Restore Performance Improvements for Amazon RDS for MS-SQL
Improved restore performance of Amazon RDS for Microsoft SQL Server with efficient storage helps DBAs minimize downtime and meet strict recovery time objectives (RTO). This feature ensures database recovery operations that complete more quickly and removes the storage requirement on access nodes, thereby reducing the impact on mission-critical applications and enhancing overall system availability.
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Support for Amazon RDS Point-In-Time Recovery using native automated snapshots
Commvault has enabled support for Amazon RDS snapshot backup using native automated snapshots to achieve point-in-time recovery (PITR). With this feature, admins can easily recover their Amazon RDS database to a specified PIT, providing a safeguard against accidental writes and deletes.
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Enabling Point in Time Restore for Amazon RDS Instances
Support for Azure Managed Identities for Backup and Cloudburst
The feature enables Azure Backup Administrators to use Azure managed identities for secure authentication and access to Azure resources. By using managed identities, administrators can securely manage resource access without handling credentials directly, improving the security of their resources. Additionally, the feature automates credential rotation, reducing the need for manual intervention.
Support for specifying snapshot SKU in the VM group
This feature allows backup administrators to specify a default SKU for all VM snapshots created for a specific VM Group based on cost performance, so that they can ensure the snapshots use the appropriate storage type based on their requirements.
Commvault Cloud Platform
Simplified Data Retention with Days-Based Approach
The days-based retention simplifies data management by eliminating the need to consider cycles in data aging. This approach helps you retain data for appropriate duration with ease to align with your business retention requirements.
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On Prem Protection
Automatically prune database backup logs while protecting PostgreSQL clusters
Optimize the performance of PostgreSQL database clusters by enabling automatic pruning of logs from the master server when the standby server is unavailable and a backup is performed. This helps to reclaim storage space and prevent disruptions.
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PostgreSQL Cluster Backup Support
Enable 1-Touch backup by default for Linux file servers
1-Touch backup will be enabled by default for Linux File Servers in both software and SaaS. This enables the clients to perform bare-metal recovery (BMR) when needed. When 1-Touch backup is enabled on Linux clients, the backup operation type changes from "Backup" to "1-Touch Backup."
Import Avamar Protected Filesystem Data to Commvault
This feature enables administrators to efficiently and securely import Avamar long-term protected filesystem data to Commvault with improved performance and scalability, making it easier to manage and safeguard all data with Commvault. It also allows for seamless browsing and restoration of the imported data from the Command Center.
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Import Networker Protected Filesystem Data to Commvault
This feature enables administrators to efficiently and securely import Networker long-term protected filesystem data to Commvault with improved performance and scalability, making it easier to manage and safeguard all data with Commvault. It also allows for seamless browsing and restoration of the imported data from the Command Center.
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Import Veeam's Protected Filesystem and VM data to Commvault
This feature enables administrators to efficiently and securely import Veeam's long-term protected Filesystem and Virtual Machine data to Commvault with improved performance and scalability, making it easier to manage and safeguard all data in one central location. It also allows for seamless browsing and restoration of the imported data from the Command Center.
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Improve MySQL database log backup support with disk caching
Enable frequent and efficient log backups of MySQL databases at scale using disk caching. This feature ensures enhanced security by encrypting and compressing logs during the backup process.
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- Adding an Automatic Database Log Backup
- Configurations for RPO
- Creating an Automatic Schedule for Database Log Backups
- Scheduling Database Log Backups Using Disk Caching
Postgres SQL - Log backup support using disk cache logging (SDT pipeline)
The feature enables frequent, encrypted, and compressed backups of PostgresSQL databases using disk caching to enhance the security of the log backups. It allows for seamless backup operations, even with multiple clients and databases, without causing performance or scale issues. Additionally, the log backups have also been made resilient to CommServe or Mediagent failures.
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Disk Caching
Optimizing PostgreSQL Log Backups
PostgreSQL Archive Log Directory
Restore Migrated Data on Object Store from the Command Center
You can browse, restore, and download legacy third-party migrated data on Object Store from the Command Center. This feature allows administrators to manage, monitor, and perform all migration operations from a single unified interface.
VMware Cloud Director 10.6 Support
The VMware Cloud Director 10.6 Support feature provides customers with the ability to use the Commvault plug-in to easily manage their virtual environments. This feature enables customers to efficiently perform operations and gives them greater control over their cloud infrastructure.
Recovery Orchestration
Commvault Cleanroom Recovery Integration with Palo Alto XSOAR [Available late September]
Commvault Cleanroom Recovery with Palo Alto XSOAR solution allows you to manage recovery groups and automate response and recovery actions seamlessly. You can create recovery groups, add workloads to groups, set recovery points, and change recovery targets, all within XSOAR. Additionally, anomalies detected in the Cleanroom recovery solution trigger events in XSOAR, enhancing overall security response and incident management. Coming late September.
Perform on-demand cleanup of recovery target
You can perform on-demand cleanup of recovered workloads and also disable automatic cleanup after Control Plane deletion. This helps you undo or reset the recovery process and ensure that all resources created during the recovery process are removed.
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Configuring Automatic Cleanup Options for Recovered Entities
Support for Nutanix AHV Source VMs
Nutanix AHV VMs are supported for recovery in Cleanroom Recovery. They are automatically converted and recovered into the designated cleanroom target.
Support for deleting a Cleanroom-recovered Control Plane
You can now delete a Cleanroom recovered control plane on-demand.
The delete operation performs the following:
- Cleans up the recovered control plane immediately after the testing is completed.
- Resets the Cleanroom so you can use a different backup to recreate a new control plane inside the same Cleanroom.
You can now set static IP addresses during AWS, Azure, and GCP Auto Recovery
You can configure static IP addresses for AWS, Azure, and GCP hypervisors. Static IP addresses offer control and flexibility over network configurations and allow you to achieve reliable and consistent disaster recovery.
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- Replication Options for Azure
- Periodic Replication Group Options for Google Cloud Platform
- Replication Group Options for Amazon
SaaS Applications and Active Directory
Automatically Update Field Permissions for a Salesforce User
You can now automatically update the missing field permissions for a Salesforce user associated with the Commvault Cloud software. This feature eliminates the need for manually managing permissions and integrates seamlessly with your Salesforce org's permissions framework.
Seamless Browse, Backup and Restores for Salesforce with Error-Handling Enhancements
The following enhancements are implemented for Salesforce backup, restore, and record-level browse operations:
Default selection of all parent records during restore jobs.
Warning messages are displayed for potential issues and common errors related to metadata mismatches, batch quotas, and duplicate records.
Security
Commvault Cloud Platinum Resilience Receives AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR) Certification
Commvault is proud to announce that we've achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Foundational Technical Review (FTR) certification for our Platinum Resilience service. The AWS FTR ensures that AWS Partner products and solutions meet a specific set of requirements based around security, reliability, and operational excellence, as defined by the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
Platinum Resilience is Commvault's premium cyber resilence service, which provides unparalleled protection, engagement, and response with white-glove onboarding, air-gapped management, and security specialists ready 24/7 to assist with any cyber event.
You can purchase Platinum Resilience via the AWS Marketplace. Reach out to your Commvault, AWS, or preferred partner to learn more.
More Information
- Commvault Cloud - Platinum Resilience
- Commvault AWS Partner Network (APN)
- Foundational Technical Review (FTR)
CrowdStrike Integration
The CrowdStrike integration allows customers to enhance their cybersecurity defenses by combining the capabilities of CrowdStrike Falcon with our enterprise backup and recovery platform. This integration enables early detection of threats, ensuring quick and coordinated responses to protect backup assets and sensitive data. Customers can initiate proactive recovery actions, reinforcing their security posture and providing peace of mind.
WIZ vulnerability status during recovery
The WIZ vulnerability status feature provides a quick link to the Wiz Vulnerability Report during VM recovery. This enables security teams to address any vulnerabilities within the recovered asset immediately, ensuring they can limit exposure to potential threats quickly.
Storage Solutions
IntelliSnap - Safe Snap support for Hitachi
IntelliSnap enables Safe Snap support for Hitachi Thin Image Advanced snapshots, providing a secure way to take snapshots of your data. This feature offers value to the end customer by ensuring data integrity and minimizing the risk of data loss during the snapshot process.
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Immutable Snapshot Using Hitachi Vantara Safe Snap
Upgrade SuperMicro platform to support X12 servers for Reference Architecture
The SuperMicro platform is being upgraded to support X12 servers for N12 and N24 Reference Architecture deployments. This means that users will be able to adopt the latest generation of hardware, allowing them to leverage the latest systems available from SMC and ensuring the longest product and hardware support life. The upgrade includes hardware monitoring and auto imaging support for N12 and N24 SMC RA systems. Overall, this upgrade enhances the functionality and compatibility of the SuperMicro platform, providing an improved user experience and the ability to take advantage of the latest hardware advancements.
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Design Specifications for HyperScale X Reference Architecture