TSM FastBack 6.1.4.0 Released

[mccleld]

Once again, IBM seems to have sneaked another release of FastBack under the door. Seriously, am I missing something, or is IBM just not so great at communicating this stuff to its customers any more?

However, reading the 'Known Problems and Limitations' for 6.1.4.0 (https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21500672&wv=1) does give me some cause for concern:

o - "Performing a restore to a disk that contains volumes is not supported on devices running Microsoft Windows 7"
So, this is basically telling me that Windows 7 isn't supported.

o - "Performing backups is not supported when the FastBack client is configured to work in SAN mode and the FastBack server is running in a 64 bit environment"
More concerning. My understanding was that in order to back up clusters the FastBack client *had* to be in SAN mode. So, in essence, this suggests to me that backup of clusters are not supported on the 64-bit server.

Moreover, I'm eager to find out if any of these apply retrospectively to pre-6.1.4.0 versions.

Perhaps I can understand why they didn't make a big fuss about this release.

/David Mc
London, UK

p.s., Happy Birthday IBM.

 

[ober67]

Hi There Mccleid,

I just saw this as well. I have downloaded it and tested. So far so good. Apparently there is a fix for an MBR false positive error in this release. Then there is the annoying alerts that a volume is not being backed up when you choose a exchange or SQl icons.

Have you tried it yet?


cheers

GB

 

[GregE]

I've downloaded the "Try and Buy" version to test. 6.1.0.0.

Is there somewhere public to download the latest patches? Or are those only available to licensed customers?

 

[mccleld]

Hi Greg,

Hmn, good question. The patches and fixpacks are downloaded from IBM Fix Central and therefore by entitlement only. Might be worth checking there what you have access too, but as you're on a try and buy there's a possibility you could be version limited - which will suck if you wanted to try on a 64bit platform (i.e., 6.1.3.0 onwards).

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers,
__________
David Mc
London, UK

 

[[email protected]]

David,

Have you moved forward on this issue and have achieved any new conclusions of tests on this fact?

I am up to deploy FastBack 6.1.4.0 on top of Windows 2008 64 bits, We need to use SAN Mode, and will be falling into use only LAN Mode because of this restriction.

If anybody can provide feedback on this, please do it.

Thanks and regards.

Nicolas Pérez de Arenaza.

 

[[email protected]]

David,

Reading your posts seem to be that you had already tried 6.1.3.0 on 64 bits environments.
Have you been able to run FastBack clients on SAN Mode against a FastBack Server running 6.1.3.0 on Windows 2008 64 bits?

The document that shows 6.1.3.0 limitations does not mention a limitation on SAN Mode as the 6.1.4.0 does.

Please reply.

thanks and regards,

Nicolas.