Micro Focus Storage Manager 5.2 for Active Directory includes performance enhancements, new functionality, and addresses several outstanding issues.
The Storage Manager 5.2 Engine is backwards compatible with the Storage Manager 4 and 5 Event Monitor.
The Storage Manager 5.2 Engine requires the 5.2 version of the SMAdmin administrative client. If you attempt to log in to a 5.2 Engine with an older version of SMAdmin, it will result in an error. Likewise, if you attempt to log in to a 5.1 Engine using SMAdmin 5.2, it will also result in an error.
Micro Focus recommends that you update all Storage Manager components at your earliest convenience.
Storage Manager 5.2 for Active Directory includes new versions of the SMAdmin, Agent, and Engine components. When upgrading the Engine, you are required to update the SQL Server database schema.
The Work Log is a mechanism that maintains a history of Storage Manager events. The Work Log contains summary records for events that have reached the processed state; in other words, those for which an effective policy has been calculated and run to completion or have been aborted by administrative action.
Data from the Work Log is presented in a pivot grid based on the parameters you choose. You can use this data for historical event tracking.
The Work Log is an optional component of Storage Manager and requires you to install Apache CouchDB.
There are new Action Blocks for the Move Schedule and Target Path properties of policies.
This enhancement addresses DFS configurations where a DFS link is configured to point to the root of a DFS namespace.
Information on this page is now presented graphically. Additionally, the event logging is now on a persistent basis.
A new option for groom rules lets you now specify a set number of years that the contents of a user or group folder will be vaulted, based on a specified policy or groom operation. This is particularly useful for archiving files that have not been accessed or modified since a specific year.
When an event is pending while waiting for an open window in a policy’s Move Schedule, the event can now be bypassed allowing it to begin moving data immediately regardless of the Move Schedule.
The scheduled database cleanup task now prunes old entries from the GSR objects and shares tables.
The following top-level containers are omitted from the GSR data:
Builtin
Computers
Domain Controllers
ForeignSecurityPrincipals
Microsoft Exchange Security Groups
Microsoft Exchange System Objects
LostAndFound
Managed Service Accounts
NTDS Quotas
Program Data
System
TPM Devices
The Validate button has been removed from the migration wizard.
Beginning with version 4, Storage Manager for Active Directory exclusively uses DNS FQDNs for server names in all UNC paths set in and by Storage Manager. This is a change from Storage Manager 3.x and earlier, where NetBIOS names were used (though a configuration file-only option to use DNS names existed in Storage Manager 3.1.x). This change complies with the Microsoft recommendation, as Microsoft slowly attempts to phase out NetBIOS and WINS.
This problem manifests itself in two scenarios:
Folder Redirection has already been in effect where the UNC path value for the home folder uses one form of the host name, and then the UNC path of the home folder attribute is modified to refer to the same actual location but with the host name in the other format (for example, switching from NetBIOS to DNS FQDN).
Switching the UNC path from server and share, regardless of the host name format that was used, to using a DFS name space where the DFS link being used resolves to the same location as the original UNC path. For example, switching from share \\server\\share\\pathremainder to using the DFS name space \\some-domain.com\dfs-name-space\link\path-remainder, where they resolve to the same location.
The root-cause for the problem is that the Folder Redirection code in Windows, prior to the hotfix, was not resolving the old and new UNC path values for the home folder to determine if they refer to the same location on disk. Unlike Storage Manager, which makes this determination via its “path overlap detection” functionality, the Folder Redirection code makes a bad assumption that it can unconditionally delete the files on the “old” path after it copies them to the “new” path and thus, it ends up deleting files that should not have been deleted.
These Windows bugs, which can result in loss of data in the redirected folders or the entire redirected folder, are described in the following Microsoft KB articles:
“You are unable to update the target location of offline file shares in the Offline File client side cache without administrative permission in Windows Server 2008 R2 or in Windows 7” http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977229
“After you apply a GPO to redirect a folder to a new network share, the redirected folder is empty on client computers that are running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008” http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977611
These KB articles specifically apply to users logging on through Windows Vista or Windows 7 computers, as well as users logging on interactively on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. However, users on other operating systems may be affected as well. Fortunately, both of the KB articles above include links to hotfixes that help resolve these issues.
While this is not a Storage Manager issue by itself, Storage Manager’s exclusive use of DNS FQDNs in UNC paths can exacerbate this problem, or introduce it into an environment that was previously exclusively using NetBIOS naming for servers and using folder redirection. If your environment uses folder redirection, we strongly recommend reading the KB articles above and applying any relevant hotfixes before you manage storage with Storage Manager. In fact, we strongly recommend applying these hotfixes if you use folder redirection in your AD environment with the affected operating systems, even if you are not managing user storage with Storage Manager. Microsoft’s continuing push to move away from NetBIOS and WINS might eventually introduce this issue into your environment with or without Storage Manager installed.