About This Release

This document contains information about Oracle Secure Backup Release 19.1. This information is applicable only to this release.

Further details are explained in the following sections:

Image Contents

An Oracle Secure Backup image contains the installation files, tools, documentation, and software required to install and configure Oracle Secure Backup on the selected platform.

You can install Oracle Secure Backup on various platforms. For each platform, Oracle provides a corresponding image.

Obtain an Oracle Secure Backup image from the product site:

Release Components

The only product in this release is Oracle Secure Backup.

Licensing Information

Refer to Oracle Secure Backup Licensing Information for licensing terms.

Supported Tape Devices and Platforms

Supported platforms, web browsers, NAS devices, tape drives, and tape libraries are listed at the following URL:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database-technologies/secure-backup/learnmore/index.html

Upgrading Oracle Secure Backup

You can upgrade Oracle Secure Backup 18.1.0.0, Oracle Secure Backup 18.1.0.1, or Oracle Secure Backup 18.1.0.2 to Oracle Secure Backup 19.1.

If you want to upgrade from an older version of Oracle Secure Backup, then you must first upgrade to Oracle Secure Backup 18.1.0.1 and then upgrade to Oracle Secure Backup 19.1.

Note:

You must upgrade all media servers to Oracle Secure Backup 19.1.

Access to any new commands and options introduced in Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 are not supported from earlier version clients. The new commands must be accessed from an Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 host or through the Oracle Secure Backup Web Tool. A database backup to a cloud storage device from an Oracle Secure Backup earlier than 18.1 is not supported.

The obtool utility is available for a client if the client version matches with that of the administrative server. For example, if the administrative server is upgraded to Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 and the clients have Oracle Secure Backup 18.1.0.2, then obtool is not available for those clients. For clients to use the obtool functionality and the new features, they must upgrade to the same version as the administrative server, that is, Oracle Secure Backup 19.1.

Note:

The clients can have earlier versions of Oracle Secure Backup if required in certain scenarios. For example, the operation system on client does not support the current version of Oracle Secure Backup.

Upgrading a client to the same Oracle Secure Backup version as on the administrative server ensures the highest level of interoperability.

See Also:

About Oracle Secure Backup Client Backward Compatibility

An Oracle Secure Backup client supports backward compatibility and interoperability between the current version and its immediate previous release.

Support for Client Backward Compatibility

You can use backward compatibility with limited feature availability for Oracle Secure Backup clients after the administrative server and the media server are upgraded to the same version of Oracle Secure Backup.

Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 supports backward compatibility with the following:

  • Oracle Secure Backup 18.1.0.2

  • Oracle Secure Backup 18.1.0.1

  • Oracle Secure Backup 18.1.0.0

Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 supports the Oracle Secure Backup 18.1.0.2 features and is interoperable with their functionality.

Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 does not support backward compatibility with Oracle Secure Backup 12. However, Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 can restore backups created in Oracle Secure Backup 12.

Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 is not supported on Linux 32-bit platforms or Windows 32-bit platforms. Therefore, it does not support any clients on these platforms. For more information, see Supported Platforms and Tape Devices.

For any queries related to compatibility with Oracle Secure Backup versions, contact Oracle Support.

Features, Functionalities, and Bug Fixes in Oracle Secure Backup

Topics

New Features

Oracle Secure Backup provides new features and enhancements in Release 19.1.

  • Support for backups to Immutable Buckets in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

    Oracle Secure Backup now supports backups to immutable buckets in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure object storage. Oracle Secure Backup already provides functionality to support backups to object storage and archive storage buckets by configuring them as cloud storage devices within Oracle Secure Backup. With this new feature, you can now configure and manage immutability rules for cloud storage devices from Oracle Secure Backup. You can also configure and schedule backups to the cloud storage devices with immutable rules.

    For more information, see About Backups in Immutable Buckets.

  • Upload backups directly from client hosts to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure object storage

    Until now, backups to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure object storage from client hosts must go through media server hosts in Oracle Secure Backup domain. With this new feature, you can configure a client host to directly stream backup data to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure object storage. This option not only eliminates the extra hop through media server but also improves the overall backup throughput in the backup domain.

    For more information, see About Client Direct to Cloud.

  • Support for UTF-8 as encoding format for internal representation of Windows file names within Oracle Secure Backup

    This feature enables file names in Windows platform to be represented in UTF-8 encoding within Oracle Secure Backup software. This feature helps in displaying and entering file names in non-English languages correctly during catalog browse, data set creation, and restore operations related to a Windows client host. This does not affect the current functionality of Linux or UNIX hosts because Linux and UNIX platforms use UTF-8 as the default encoding for file names.

    For more information, see obtool Invocation.

  • Schedule jobs across media servers in a round-robin sequence

    A new policy msloadbalancer is introduced under Operations Policies. When you set this policy value to roundrobin, the scheduler selects the attach points in a round-robin sequence among multiple media servers that have the same attached device. This helps improve load balancing in cloud environments where the same object storage bucket is attached to multiple media servers as the Oracle Secure Backup storage device.

    For more information, see msloadbalancer.

  • Additional options while installing Oracle Secure Backup

  • The default backup encryption algorithm is now AES256.

    For more information, see algorithm, backup, and mkstage.

Deprecated or Desupported Functionality

This section indicates whether any features or commands are deprecated or desupported in Oracle Secure Backup 19.1.

Deprecated Functionality

  • Support for physical tape drives and libraries, including VTLs emulating libraries and tape drives is deprecated. These may not be supported in future releases of Oracle Secure Backup.

  • Support for administrative server and media server on non-Linux platforms is deprecated. Future releases of Oracle Secure Backup will support administrative server and media server only on Linux platform.

  • Support for Oracle Secure Backup client will continue on all platforms, that is, Linux, Solaris, Windows, HP-UX, and AIX.

Desupported Functionality

The Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 software is not interoperable with Oracle Secure Backup 12.2 and earlier version clients.

Bug Fixes

Here is a list of bugs that are fixed in Oracle Secure Backup 19.1.0.0.

Table 1-1 Bugs Fixed in Oracle Secure Backup 19.1.0.0

Bug Number Bug Description
31901107 OBTOOL CANCELJOB SHOULD HAVE ABILITY TO SPECIFY JOB NAME BY WILDCARD
32618951 CAN NOT REMOVE BACKUP INSTANCE FROM CLOUD DEVICE VIA WEBUI
33610521 RACE CONDITION BETWEEN SCHEDULER AND SERVICE DAEMON DURING THE REKEY OPERATION
33718121 OSB D-ISAM DATAFILES (.DAT FILES) 4 GB LIMIT
33726902 ADD SUPPORT FOR IBM TS1160 TAPE DRIVE (LTO-9 FAMILY) AKA THE 0359260F TAPE DRIVE
34033778 CLOUD: CATALOG OF CLOUD DEVICE FAILS IF INCOMPLETE BACKUP EXISTS IN BUCKET
34081539 IMPLEMENT ROUND ROBIN SELECTION AMONGST MULTIPLE ATTACH POINTS FOR A GIVEN DEVICE
34126354 WINDOWS BACKUP TRANSCRIPT SHOWS ERROR - PATH TOO LONG
34142279 QUALIFY THE "IBM ULTRIUM" "" "ULTRIUM-HH9" DRIVE AT TANDBERG
34209524 OSB INSTALL FAILURE DUE TO NDMP PORT OCCUPIED
34215192 LSHOST -LONG DOES NOT DISPLAY THE HOST'S NDMPPORT SETTING
34352269 IF "TRANSIENT" ISN'T CHECKED OFF, USER SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO ENTER A PASSWORD IN THE "SPECIFY PASSPHRASE" FIELDS
34411737 OSB BACKUP JOB EXITED WITH ERROR WHEN JUNCTION POINT OR SYMBOLIC LINK PATH IS PROVIDED IN WINDOWS PLATFORM
34479571 OSB WINDOWS CLIENT BACKUP FAILS WHEN IT CONTAINS DIRECTORY NAMES IN JAPANESE CHARACTERS
34596392 OSB JOB FAILING WITH "INVALID ISAM FILE FORMAT (FSP ISAM MANAGER)"
34640647 WINDOWS.X64 : READ-ONLY FILE IS RESTORED WITH READ-WRITE PRIVILEGES
34842375 OSB BACKUP THE METADATA INFORMATION OF THE REPARSE POINT IN WINDOWS
35016480 STAGE RULES DO NOT APPLY CORRECTLY SINCE UPDATE TO OSB 18.1.0.2
35185727 ADD SUPPORT FOR THE HPE ULTRIUM 9 WHICH IS AN OEM OF THE IBM LTO9 TAPE DRIVE (REMOTE TESTING AT HPE TEST SITE)
35195790 NDMP GET CONFIG FAILS IF MOUNTED PATH LENGTH IS > 127
35423243 DATA SERVICE CRASH WHEN CACHING HIVELIST REGISTRY ENTRIES IN WINDOWS
35724841 OSB BACKUPS MASKED AS FAILED DUE TO "ERROR: FAILED TO FLUSH DATA" ERROR
35863409 OSB RESTORE IS GETTING HUNG WITH "AWAIT_NDMP_EVENT TIMED OUT WAITING FOR A SERVICE TO HALT, FLAG IS 4"
35869840 PROVIDE OPTION TO INSTALL ADMIN SERVER WITHOUT WEB SERVER
35938510 CLOUD: SUPPORT API KEY OF SIZE > 2048 BITES
36044806 OBWINVSS SAMPLE_DATASET FAILS WHEN HOST HAS A REMOVABLE DRIVE
36093021 VFYLIBS THROWING "ERROR: GETTING DEV INFO FOR <TAPE DRIVE NAME> - I/O ERROR"
36111541 CREATE IRON MOUNTAIN REPORTS IF MEDIA IS BEING MOVED TO OR FROM IRON MOUNTAIN
36139148 AUTO START OF OSB PROCESS NOT WORKING AFTER REBOOT ON OL8

Outstanding Bugs and Known Issues

Oracle Secure Backup 19.1 has some outstanding bugs and known issues.

Bug 34901288

CSH AND LIBNSL NEED TO BE INSTALLED ON OEL8 BEFORE OSB CAN BE INSTALLED SUCCESSFULLY

  • Description

    For installing Oracle Secure Backup on Oracle Linux 8, the packages CSH and LIBNSL are prerequisites.

  • Workaround

    To successfully install Oracle Secure Backup on Oracle Linux 8, ensure that CSH and LIBNSL are installed on the host. For more information, see Prerequisites for Installing on Linux or UNIX.

Bug 36302135

WORM: BACKUPS STAY IN STAGE-IN-PROGRESS STATE DUE TO FAILED STAGING JOB RESTRICTED TO MIX OF MUTABLE AND IMMUTABLE DEVICES

  • Description

    Failure of backup staging jobs due to unsupported or misconfigured device restriction. A restriction list cannot have both immutable and mutable devices. As a result, backups remain in the stage-in-progress state and further staging scan jobs skip these backups.

  • Workaround

    Run the obtool command managedev and clear the stage-in-progress state. 
    ob> managedev --clearstage <stage-rule-name> <stage-device-name>

Bug 36515194

PHYSICAL TAPE AND LIBRARY DEVICES CAN'T BE CREATED ON OSB AIX 19.1.0.0.0 (NO INSTALL/MAKDEV, DISCOVERDEV DOESN'T WORK)

  • Description

    On AIX, configuration of tape devices using obtool discoverdev does not work.

  • Workaround

    Create the tape devices in AIX manually. For more information, see Manually Creating Devices in AIX.

Bug 36332928

SSSD erroneously closing TCP socket of Oracle Secure Backup process causing large scale backup failures

  • Description

    Failure of client backups on Oracle Linux 8.9 with NDMP connect error. This issue occurred due to a bug in the SSSD package version sssd-2.9.1-4.0.1.el8_9.x86_64.

  • Workaround

    Upgrade the operating system to Oracle Linux 8.10

Documentation Accessibility

For information about Oracle's commitment to accessibility, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program website at http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=docacc.

Access to Oracle Support

Oracle customers that have purchased support have access to electronic support through My Oracle Support. For information, visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=info or visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=trs if you are hearing impaired.