PlateSpin Forge is a consolidated recovery hardware appliance that protects physical and virtual workloads by using embedded virtualization technology. In the event of a production server outage or disaster, workloads can be rapidly powered on within the PlateSpin Forge recovery environment and continue to run as normal until the production environment is restored.

PlateSpin Forge enables you to:

• Concurrently protect multiple workloads (10 to 50, depending on the model)
• Test the failover workload without interfering with your production environment
• Quickly recover workloads upon failure
• Take advantage of existing external storage solutions, such as SANs

With internal, prepackaged storage, Forge has a total storage capacity of up to 20 terabytes, although the capacity is almost unlimited when external storage configurations are used by adding iSCSI or Fibre Channel cards.

As part of the protection workflow, PlateSpin Forge creates a failover workload (a virtual replica of your production workload) and regularly updates it at configurable intervals. If your production workload goes offline, you can fail it over to the VM replica, which takes over the business services of the failed workload. You can then fail this workload back to either its original or to a completely new infrastructure, physical or virtual.

The documentation for this product is available on the PlateSpin Forge 11.3 Documentation website.

PlateSpin Forge 11.3 adds new features and enhancements, and resolves several previous issues. It also resolves important performance and reliability issues.

New Features

• PlateSpin Forge has been rebranded as a Micro Focus product. The rebranding does not impact product features, installation paths, and file names. Your existing licenses remain valid.
  

• This release provides Single Node Block-Based Transfer (BBT) for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012 R2, and 2016 Clusters. See "Preparing for Windows Clusters Protection" in the PlateSpin Forge User Guide

Enhancements to Supported Configurations

• Windows Workloads
  

  Source Workload	Version	Remarks
  Microsoft Windows	Windows Server 2016 Windows Server 2016 Clusters	Requires VMware 6.0 or later. For upgraded systems, this capability is not available without rebuilding to Forge 11.3 Appliance 4, which provides VMware 6.5 U1.

   

• Linux Workloads
  

  Source Workload	Version	Remarks
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)	6.7 to 6.9 7.0 to 7.3	PlateSpin Forge does not support the XFS version 5 (v5) file system on RHEL 7.3, and on distributions based on RHEL 7.3. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.7, Oracle Linux 6.7, and CentOS 6.7 workloads with LVM volumes, incremental replication is supported only for the latest available kernel (version 2.6.32-642.13.1.el6.x86_64) for the RHEL 6.7 distribution. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8, Oracle Linux 6.8, and CentOS 6.8 workloads with LVM volumes, incremental replication is supported only for the latest available kernel (version 2.6.32-696.20.1.el6.x86_64) for the 6.8 distribution.
  SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)	11 SP4
  Oracle Linux (formerly Oracle Enterprise Linux)	Distributions based on RHEL	Precompiled blkwatch drivers are available for UEK and RHCK for Oracle Linux 6.7 and higher.
  CentOS	Distributions based on RHEL	Use RHEL blkwatch drivers for the appropriate distribution.
  Open Enterprise Server	2015 SP1	Use SLES blkwatch drivers for the appropriate distribution. For OES 2015 SP1, Forge supports NSS32-bit pools up to 8 TB in size; NSS64-bit pools are not supported.

  For a list of precompiled blkwatch drivers for newly supported Linux distributions, see "Linux Distributions Supported by Forge" in the PlateSpin Forge User Guide.
  
  

• Targets Container
  
  PlateSpin Forge 11.3 ships with VMware ESXi 6.5 U1 as the target virtual host that serves as the protection container.
  

• Additional Enhancements
  

  • Virtio devices
  • Same as Source storage mapping strategy
  • LVM raw disks
  • Configuring NSS snapshots for NSS pool replication

Enhancements for Performance

• OFX Controller
• Workload configration tasks in the Web Interface

Enhancements for Security

The PlateSpin Protect 11.3 upgrade process supports your custom sa password for the PlateSpin Database.

Resolved Issues

This release resolves several previous software issues, as well as important performance and reliability issues. For a list of software fixes, see the PlateSpin Forge 11.3 Resolved Issues.

The files available here are restricted to licensed PlateSpin Forge customers.

The PlateSpin Forge installation program is not available on this site. Forge appliance software is pre-installed on hardware that is shipped directly to customers by a Micro Focus manufacturing partner. Other Forge software files (such as upgrade or rebuild kits) are available for existing Forge customers who contact Customer Care.

Filename	Usage
bootofx.x2p.iso	Used to boot BIOS firmware-based targets or UEFI firmware-based targets in preparation for "workload failback." See "Failback to Physical Machines" in the PlateSpin Forge User Guide. Note: This tool is also compatible with the PlateSpin Forge product.
VolumeManager.exe	Used to change the local volume serial numbers to match on each node of the Windows cluster that you want to protect. See "Synchronizing Serial Numbers on Cluster Node Local Storage" in the PlateSpin Forge User Guide. Note: This tool is also compatible with the PlateSpin Forge product.

Licensed PlateSpin Forge customers can upgrade existing PlateSpin Forge 11.2 Server software to PlateSpin Forge 11.3, with or without hotfixes or patches applied. Other direct updates are not supported. The VMware host is not upgraded. See the PlateSpin Forge 11.3 Upgrade Guide.

You can rebuild supported PlateSpin Forge Appliance 3 systems to PlateSpin Forge 11.3 Appliance 4. A rebuild allows you to upgrade the PlateSpin Server to Forge 11.3 and the VMware host to VMware ESXi 6.5 U1. See the PlateSpin Forge 11.3 Rebuild Guide. Contact Customer Care to obtain the PlateSpin Forge 11.3 Upgrade/Rebuild Kit.

For the most recent information about requirements for workloads, see "Supported Configurations" in the PlateSpin Forge User Guide.

To download the boot image:

1. On the download page, select the bootofx.x2p.iso file to download.

2. Click download, then copy the file to an accessible location on the computer where you want to use the tool.

Forge documentation includes instructions you can use for updating these ISOs with additional device drivers.

To download the utility:

1. On the download page, select the VolumeManager.exe file to download.

2. Click download, then copy the file to an accessible location on each Windows cluster node.

For detailed instructions, see "Synchronizing Serial Numbers on Cluster Node Local Storage"in the PlateSpin Forge User Guide.

For the list of known issues, see the Release Notes on the PlateSpin Forge11.3 Documentation website.