SupportConnect - BrightStor Storage Newsletter, Version 07.03
  

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CA
E-News
BrightStor® Storage Newsletter
Version 07.03
March 28, 2007

In This Newsletter
Product News
> CA Simplifies Product Names
> Improving Your On-line Support Experience: CA's New Technical Support Initiatives
> New Security Updates Released for BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup and BrightStor® Enterprise Backup
for Windows
> Product Line Communities for Storage Customers
>Web Replay
>PLC/User Group Meetings at CA WORLD® 2007

Product Updates
> BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.1 for Linux and UNIX
> CA Message Manager Mailbox Manager

General Information
> BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup for Windows: Remote Disaster Recovery Errors; 0x2, 1722 and Error Connecting to Remote Server
> BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup for UNIX/Linux: How to Manually Save and Restore the BEB/BAB Ingres® Database
> CA Vantage™ Storage Resource Manager - New Enhancements Introduced in the SP4 Maintenance Delivery. Part II of II.

Special Events
> Storage and Information Management at CA WORLD® 2007

Product News

CA Simplifies Product Names
Beginning January 30, 2007, CA is simplifying its product names. Our intention is to describe our products by what they enable you and your business to accomplish. Some names have already changed; others will change over the next 12-18 months as part of the planned development cycle. There is nothing you need to do. We have established a dedicated site at ca.com/productnames as a resource center where you'll find additional information such as frequently asked questions, customer service numbers, and a list of current product names and former names.

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Improving Your On-line Support Experience: CA's New Technical Support Initiatives
You talked. We listened. We hope you've noticed some of the changes. In response to your feedback, we've been upgrading the CA support site. We're implementing a series of initiatives, with the aim of providing you, our valued customer, with world-class information and support.
Read the full story.

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New Security Updates Released for BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup and BrightStor® Enterprise Backup for Windows
New security updates have been released for BrightStor ARCserve Backup and BrightStor Enterprise Backup for Windows. These security updates address potential Denial of Service (DOS) and remote code execution vulnerabilities in the Tape Engine service vulnerabilities that were reported to CA by McAfee. These updates also address a separate vulnerability in the BrightStor Backup Remote Procedure Call Server which can result in DOS. These new security risks affect the base product only.

Affected products:

BrightStor Products:
BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.5
BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.1
BrightStor Enterprise Backup 10.5
BrightStor ARCserve Backup v9.01

CA Protection Suites r2:
CA Server Protection Suite r2
CA Business Protection Suite r2
CA Business Protection Suite for Microsoft Small Business Server Standard Edition r2
CA Business Protection Suite for Microsoft Small Business Server Premium Edition r2

CA strongly recommends that this security update be applied to any systems that have the BrightStor ARCserve Backup or BrightStor Enterprise Backup base product installed. This does not need to be installed on a machine that only has a BrightStor Agent installed.

BAB r11.5 - supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO86255
BAB r11.1 - supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO86926
BAB v9.01 - supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO86260
BEB v10.5 - supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO86259

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Product Line Communities for Storage Customers
For discussion forums with other users and to engage in active and ongoing communication between customers, development, and support, join one of the global virtual customer communities called Product Line Communities. Product Line Communities (PLC) focus on a variety of CA products and solutions as well as specific platforms and technologies. PLC membership is open to all customers who are actively using CA solutions. You can join a PLC by visiting the CA Customer Communities website at causergroups.com. You can email the Customer Programs Team at customerprograms@ca.com.

PLC - Recovery Management: Click here to join PLC - Recovery Management. Products include: BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup, BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup for Laptops & Desktops, XOSoft (WANSync, WANSyncCD, Assured Recovery, Enterprise Rewinder, InMotion)

Webcast replay from February 28:
Exchange Server 2007 Data Protection Strategies with CA BrightStor ARCserve Backup

CA BrightStor ARCserve Backup will support Exchange 2007 protection with its popular agent based solution for Microsoft servers in its upcoming release r11.5 Service Pack 3. The BAB Agent for Microsoft Exchange has been enhanced to support Exchange server 2007 and will provide Database level backup and recovery. In addition, the BAB Agent for Exchange - Premium Add-on will also support the document level backup and recovery. This presentation outlines the various new features and major areas of improvement that will influence organizations to upgrade the agent for protecting their Exchange 2007 deployments.

PLC/User Group Meeting at CA WORLD®: April 23, 2007   Start Time: 17:15   End Time: 18:15
At CA WORLD, we invite you to join the face to face PLC meeting for your user community. This is the chance for customers from around the globe to meet in person and engage in peer networking and mutual support. These sessions will be primarily guided by the members - topics may include introductions to CA Development teams, quarterly call topics, Enhancement Requests, and Product Requirements. Email any suggestions for topics to customerprograms@ca.com.


PLC - Information Management: Click here to join PLC - Information Management.

Products include: CA Message Management solutions (formerly Assentor from iLUMIN), CA MDY solutions (formerly MDY).

PLC/User Group Meeting at CA WORLD: April 25, 2007   Start Time: 17:15   End Time: 18:15
At CA WORLD, we invite you to join the face to face PLC meeting for your user community. This is the chance for customers from around the globe to meet in person and engage in peer networking and mutual support. These sessions will be primarily guided by the members - topics may include introductions to CA Development teams, quarterly call topics, Enhancement Requests, and Product Requirements. Email any suggestions for topics to customerprograms@ca.com.


PLC - Mainframe Storage Management: Click here to join PLC - Mainframe Storage Management.
Products include: BrightStor® CA-Vantage™ Storage Resource Manager, BrightStor®
CA-Allocate™ DASD Space and Placement, BrightStor® CA-Vtape™ Virtual Tape System, BrightStor® CA-1® Tape Management, BrightStor® CA-Dynam®/TLMS Tape Management, BrightStor® CA-Disk™ Backup and Restore, BrightStor® Tape Encryption

PLC/User Group Meeting at CA WORLD: April 23, 2007   Start Time: 17:15   End Time: 18:15
At CA WORLD, we invite you to join the face to face PLC meeting for your user community. This is the chance for customers from around the globe to meet in person and engage in peer networking and mutual support. These sessions will be primarily guided by the members - topics may include introductions to CA Development teams, quarterly call topics, Enhancement Requests, and Product Requirements. Email any suggestions for topics to customerprograms@ca.com.

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Product Updates
BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.1 for Linux and UNIX
QO86605, QO86606, QO86608, and QO86609 - Tape engine/added device support updates. Adds support for additional devices and addresses tape engine-related issues.
These are available for download at:
Linux:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO86605
SUN:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO86609
HP-UX:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO86608
AIX:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO86606

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CA Message Manager Mailbox Manager
R11.5.1 Update has been released for Exchange and Lotus Notes. They are now available at:

Lotus Notes:
supportconnectw.ca.com/public//msgmgrlotus/downloads/msgmgrlotus-solpatch.asp

Exchange:
supportconnectw.ca.com/public//msgmgrexch/downloads/msgmgrexch-solpatch.asp

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General Information
BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup for Windows r11.5: Remote Disaster Recovery Errors; 0x2, 1722 and Error Connecting to Remote Server
Problem Description:
Disaster recovery restores fail with the errors:
  1. The recovery application "C:\WINDOWS\system32\asr_pfu.exe /restore /sifpath=C:\WINDOWS\repair\asr.sif" returned an error code 0x2
  2. Error in connecting to the remote server
  3. DRInitializeModule : TSICreateTSIHandle() failed. Error 1722
Problem Solution:
In certain Disaster Recovery scenarios, the Network Interface Card (NIC) driver is not automatically installed during the Disaster Recovery (DR) process and DR process will fail with above errors during the remote recovery of a remote Windows 2003 or XP system. In such cases, manual steps are required to get the NIC drivers installed. Note that this is common for most NIC drivers that are not included in the Window 2003 or XP operating systems CDs.

The quickest way to verify if the NIC driver will automatically be installed is to verify if [that] the "driver".sys is included in the machine specific disk. In this example, we will use the Intel(R) PRO/1000's driver name which is e1000325.sys. The NIC driver name can be verified by opening the CardDesc.txt file located in the Machine Specific Recovery Disk.

The two methods available for recovering a remote system in this scenario are either to manually install the NIC drivers during ASR process or to manually prepare the Machine Specific Recovery Disk to integrate the NIC driver install.

For the complete manual steps, please review the complete document online at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=TEC419644.

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BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup for UNIX/Linux: How To Manually Save and Restore the BEB/BAB Ingres® Database
These documents can be used to create a backup of the BAB/BEB database, cadbase, by dumping it to files. Also, you can follow these documents to restore the saved database using those same files. It is a good idea to save a copy of your database before doing any major database maintenance so it can be restored to its original state, if necessary. You can use these to move the database to an alternate location, or as an initial step in troubleshooting database problems as a precaution. These documents covers the different UNIX systems including Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and Tru64, as well as Linux. It will walk you through the preliminary steps of making sure BAB/BEB and any database processes are shut down properly, setting some special variables used in this process, and the saving and restoring of the database. You will also find a special exclusion section you can use if you don't want to save or restore the file detail tables in the database.

Three documents have been published, and can be found online at:

Databases that have been extended at least once:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=TEC324616

Databases that have never been extended:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=TEC324617

Detailed Document:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=TEC324615

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BrightStor® CA-Vantage™ Storage Resource Manager - New Enhancements Introduced in the SP4 Maintenance Delivery. Part II of II.
In last month's newsletter, we highlighted exciting new enhancements to the CA Vantage Interface for DFSMShsm that were delivered in r11.5 SP4. This month, we continue with Part II where we will discuss the new Internal Status Monitor for CA Vantage and new RAID improvements that enhance the management of PPRC.

Internal Status Monitor
Proper implementation of CA Vantage means you need to rely on it to automatically discover (and possibly respond to) unexpected problems. CA Vantage is robust - if one small component unexpectedly fails, the product continues to perform the rest of its tasks. So the Internal Status Monitor has been introduced to watch over the major CA Vantage components and help ensure that mission-critical operations continue.

The Internal Status Monitor object can be found in the z/OS Object Tree under "BrightStor CA-Vantage Management." It will tell you which components are correctly configured to run and whether they are active or not. If a component has failed, you will see additional information about the failure. There is an Actions menu that allows you to start or stop any of the components directly from the display.

Any change of status in any component will generate a z/OS console message that can be used by CA Vantage, or other automation packages, to generate alerts such as emails and pages. You can even see whether you are licensed to run each component. In addition, the Internal Status Monitor is check-pointed after every individual status change and immediately prior to CA Vantage shutdown. So, if a component was running when you shut down and does not start when CA Vantage is restarted (or vice versa), then you'll be alerted.

PPRC Administration Improvements
With the introduction of extensions to IBM's ANTRQST macro, we have taken the opportunity to improve CA Vantage support of PPRC. PPRC is supported by all major DASD vendors, so the first change we made was to raise PPRC up a level in the z/OS Object Tree and have one set of PPRC objects for all vendors. If desired, filters can be used to zero in on specific paths between particular vendor subsystems. The "PPRC Volumes" and a new "PPRC Paths" object are now located directly underneath "RAID Devices" on the z/OS Object Tree.

The new "PPRC Paths" object has "Establish Path" and "Delete Path" Actions provided. A "Delete Pair" Action was added to the "PPRC Volumes" object, and the existing "Establish Pair" and "Suspend Pair" Actions have been upgraded. All these Actions are now available within CA Vantage automation scripts so that complex tasks can be automated - for example, you could automatically issue multiple "Delete Pair" and "Establish Pair" Actions based on certain conditions.

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Special Events
Storage and Information Management at CA WORLD® 2007
Our Top is just around the corner - April 22 to 26, 2007, and our Customer Committee members would like to share with you the reasons why you should attend.

Dear Valued CA Customer:

We'd like to update you on what is happening with CA WORLD 2007 and your Storage and Information Management solutions. We, the customer committee members, have been working with the CA staff to develop an agenda that includes technical sessions to provide you with the information and ideas to better utilize the storage and information management products, improving your ROI.

Below is our list of some of the best reasons to attend CA WORLD, along with examples of how we've seen customers derive immediate value from the conference:
  1. Campground sessions. Schedule a one-on-one with a developer to discuss functions that you need from their products, to understand the products' roadmaps, or to review aspects of CA products that affect your job. We know of an instance, where a customer could not achieve the expected results with a CA product - and it happened just before CA WORLD. Although it's easy enough to open an issue with CA, it is often difficult to communicate exactly what you need. This customer attended CA WORLD and, instead was able to explain the problem directly to a developer, who, in turn, helped the customer to succinctly describe the issue to support.
  2. Exhibition Center. Where else do you have the opportunity to request a demo from a developer who can lead you through the intricacies of a feature in the storage and information management products not currently implemented at your site? After his discussion with an expert from development, we know of a customer who was able to remotely put the desired feature into production before leaving the conference!
  3. Product Line Communities (PLC). CA has introduced Product Line Communities (PLC) to provide us with an open forum for active and ongoing communication between customers, development, and support. Not only will you be able to interact with your peers to share information, improve your user experience, and learn best practices by discovering new ways to leverage CA's solutions, but also have the ability to voice your business and IT issues as they pertain to your industry.
  4. Session topics. Customer sessions are extremely useful and cover specific examples that provide immediate value. Marketing concepts are useful prior to purchasing a product or when discussing an enhancement. However, we 'techies' derive practical value from the technical sessions delivered by customers, support, and development that go into the detail we require to implement the newly-released features.
  5. Networking. The conference provides excellent opportunities to meet with fellow "trench mates" to discuss storage and information management issues encountered on a daily basis. When we are so focused at work, we can lose sight of all of the other features that CA products provide. Meeting with other storage and information management technicians, and exchanging ideas and experiences opens your eyes to how creative our peers can be. We sometimes find customers using these products in ways that development never envisioned! You return home ready to attack your issues with a new level of energy - and with a pocket full of phone numbers and email addresses to assist when you get stuck. That alone can be the ROI needed to get you to CA WORLD!
  6. Event night. It isn't all work! CA provides a spectacular evening of great food, fun, and The Blue Man Group, with the opportunity to visit with fellow conference participants in a casual setting.
  7. Las Vegas! Does anything else need to be said?

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