Quadric Software

Alike Release Notes v4.0

Current Build 6150
Updated: 12/21/2015

Alike v4.0 marks the next generation in Quadric Software’s data backup and recovery software with exciting new features, such as remote access and cloud capabilities, and significant improvements.

All users are encouraged to install (upgrade) to this release.  Please note these important upgrade items:

• Alike Free has been retired, and will not be available in v4.0 or later.  For upgrade options, please contact sales@quadricsoftware.com
• Due to the significant architectural changes in v4.0, there no direct upgrade path.  Existing users must perform a fresh install.  For full upgrade instructions, please see the following KB article.

New Features

• Web-driven responsive UI
• Alike DR's Offsite Vaulting now supports Amazon's S3 cloud storage
• DHCP support introduced for ABDs
• Socket-based licensing

Improvements and Bug Fixes

• Page-aligned buffers increase number of supported systems for physical protection
• Improved initial backup processing handling
• CIFS vaulting performance improved through Windows overlapped I/O
• Faster Alike background operations with sqlite WAL
• Allow option to restore from Offsite Vault, even if backup exists locally
• Significantly improved hypervisor/guest metainformation detection process
• Auto-tuning job option to detect optimal settings based on I/O and memory performance
• Allow VMs to restore to different targets within the same restore/replication job
• Automatic SR detection for deploying ABD templates
• New diagnostic logging option to assist in troubleshooting
• Improved Q-Hybrid approach to system/utility drive protection
• Added Windows 10 & 2016 detection support for Q-Hybrid 
• Added automatic log & DB packaging facility to assist support inquires
• Eliminates spurious timeout error in Q-Hybrid Jobs related to VSS
• Easing validation performance congestion using Gaussian diffusion
• Improves error handling in policy jobs such as whole-host backups
• Elminates UUID conflict bug in "preserve MAC" that causes Alike database errors
• Standard and DR trial conflict resolved
• Detect & warn of unsupported characters in path to avoid installation errors
• Increased memory available to ABDs during restore
• Addresses rare Q-Hybrid drive order issue
• Q-Hybrid no longer requires Windows BCD (Boot Configuration Database) access or BCD changes
• Alike will detect damaged installation databases and prevent them from being copied to ADS archive
• Detects rare situations where a drive is erroneously skipped during backup
• Addresses mounting issue in file-level restore for Linux systems
• Fix rare drive order problem with Q-Hybrid backups
• Improved BackupScheduler graceful service shutdown
• Allow 'Transaction Reset' feature to be run directly from WebUI 
• Resolves Q-Hybrid job failure due to race condition on "result.0" file

Known Issues

• Microsoft Edge browsers are not supported, but slip past the browser detection and are allowed.
• Configuring Offsite Vaulting the first time requires a service restart to take effect
• Full restores of encrypted backups from the Offsite Vault can fail to decrypt
• Keyword/dynamic selection is not yet available in Replication jobs

Build 6150
Rleased: 12/21/2015

Fixes in build

• Q-Hybrid replication concurrency issue on initial replication pass caused bootloader issues is now repaired

Build 6129
Rleased: 12/9/2015

Fixes in build

• Version retention bug causing premature removal of backups stored Offsite is now corrected
• Validation will no longer attempt to run against backups that have just been deleted
• Validation/repair process introduced for Offsite Vault

Build 6125
Rleased: 12/8/2015

Fixes in build

• Newly added hosts uuids should always be recorded properly
• VHD/X restores no longer route over CIFS when ADS is on a drive local to the Alike server
• Minor memory leak resolved in Offsite Vaulting

Build 6111
Rleased: 12/3/2015

Fixes in build

• Offsite Vaulting network interruption handling issues are now resolved
• Expired trial keys no longer list in license page
• Manual update check added to the UI header (just click the build number at the top!)
• Alike Physical now correctly identifies UEFI partitions on Windows 7 systems
• Job times should no longer save as an hour earlier than requested, in some cases

Build 6110
Rleased: 11/30/2015

Fixes in build

• ABDs now properly release IP addresses with some DHCP server versions
• Newly added physical hosts no longer sometimes lose Access IP information
• Credential Profiles no longer reject hyphens or dashes in the username

Build 6096
Rleased: 11/20/2015

Fixes in build

• Offsite Vaulting jobs should no longer occasionally encoutner spurrious access denied errors
• XenServers with SRs that have no disks no longer cause metadata collection errors
• Newly added virtual host servers now have their UUIDs properly updated

Build 6091
Rleased: 11/17/2015

Fixes in build

• Job logs no longer 'flip' to a different job's information
• Credential Profiles now save properly for Physical Hosts
• Deleting and re-adding physical hosts no longer causes duplicate uuid errors
• S3 meta-information transfers are now stabilized
• VM selectionfiltering enabled for Restore & Replication jobs, improvements to Backup job filters
• Newly restored/replicated VMs in Xen no longer insert the xs-tools ISO image
• Replication jobs now properly allow the 'Preserve MAC' address for NICs
• The Next Run time/date on the Scheduled Jobs page no longer skips today's jobs

Build 6074
Rleased: 11/12/2015

Fixes in build

• Legacy File level restore now functions properly
• File level restore no longer errors occasionally with "invalid session" while downloading files
• Block Encryption no longer causes possible service startup failures
• The installer no longer fails with missing column error on systems that have run older installers previously
• Various minor UI improvements and error corrections
• ABD template no longer targets SRs with too little space to run diagnostic tests
• SMTP default settings prevent initial use errors

Build 6060
Rleased: 11/9/2015

Fixes in build

• File level restore should no longer display blank drives in some cases
• Minor UI text/logging improvements
• Improved error logging on database issues

Build 6055
Rleased: 11/6/2015

Fixes in build

• Keyword jobs (with name or xen tag) now operate properly
• Usernames with domain syntax (eg. DOMAIN\User) won't have their slashes flipped improperly
• VMs are now sorted alphabetically almost everywhere
• 'Key not in dictionary' error no longer occurs when proxies are enabled
• Erroneous SMTP port errors should no longer appear
• Prevent non-alphanumeric characters for GFS/Credential profile names
• Provide an icon to more easily remove selections from jobs

Build 6042
Rleased: 11/3/2015

Fixes in build

• SMTP error 7 when sending emails from Alike
• S3 I/O extraneous logging to filesystem resolved
• Backup selection target div height fixed for Firefox
• Backup selection filtering feature added
• multiple email recipients now possible with semicolon separation
• Schedules no longer add 1 hour upon saving
• Keyword (name/tag) based backup jobs are now functional
• Improved default XenNetwork detection to reduce invalid uuid errors on ABD deployments
• File level restore jobs no longer fail with 'Unknown Error'
• Offsite Vaults using compressed/encrypted NTFS no longer fail with 'error 87'