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SupportConnect - BrightStor Storage Newsletter, Version 06.10

NOTE: E-News technical information is dynamic and links in archived copies of these technical newsletters may eventually become invalid as the products evolve. Please check the support web page for your product to get the latest technical information.

E-News

BrightStor® Storage Newsletter
Version 06.10
October 18, 2006

In This Newsletter

Product News

	>	Special E-News Survey
	>	Security Updates Released for BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup and BrightStor® Enterprise Backup
	>	CA Acquires XOsoft™, Leading Provider of Continuous Application Availability Software
	>	CA to Deliver Integration Between Traditional Backup and Continuous Application Availability Solutions
	>	BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.5 for UNIX and Linux - Service Pack 2 Now Available
	>	BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.1 for NetWare - Service Pack 2 Now Available
	>	BrightStor® High Availability r11.1 - Service Pack 1 Now Available
	>	BrightStor® CA-Vtape™ Peer-to-Peer Optional Added Feature

Product Updates

	>	CA Message Manager Web Access (Assentor Mailbox Manager)
	>	BrightStor® SAN Designer
	>	BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.5 for Windows
	>	BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.5 for Linux
	>	BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.1 for Linux
	>	BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.1 for UNIX
	>	HIPERs: High Impact/Pervasive Problems (09/01 through 09/30) BrightStor® CA-1®-MVS Tape Management BrightStor® CA-Vantage™

General Information

	>	BrightStor® CA-Allocate™: Coming Soon... Additional SMF Interfaces
	>	Changes in the Message Handling in BrightStor® CA-Vantage™ Storage Resource Manager and for BrightStor® CA-Vantage™ GMI Users
	>	BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.5 for Windows: Best Practices Guide for VMware ESX Server Backup
	>	BrightStor® Storage Resource Manager: What To Do When the Linux Client Agent Won't Work

Special Events

>

Upcoming Webcast: Introducing CA XOsoft™ - The Next Step in CA's Storage Solutions -
October 26, 2006 - Noon - 1:00 p.m. ET

Product News

Special E-News Survey
Dear CA Customer,

Please participate in a special survey to formally collect your feedback on what you like about the current CA E-News newsletters and, more importantly, what you would like to see included. Please complete the survey by October 31, 2006.

Below is the URL for the survey: casurveys.com/wsb.dll/169/eNews_1.htm.

When you click on the above link, you will then need to click "Resume" to begin the survey.

A newsletter continues to be valuable only if you get what you need from it. With the information you provide, we can bring more success to you and make them truly valuable tools for everyone. Your opinion and ideas are extremely important to the future success of these publications.

Thank you for your time and feedback.

Security Updates Released for BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup and
BrightStor® Enterprise Backup
CA's Technical Support is alerting customers to a security risk associated with the BrightStor ARCserve Backup products on Windows. Researchers at TippingPoint (www.tippingpoint.com) detected multiple remotely exploitable problems and reported the vulnerabilities to CA.

The vulnerabilities involve multiple overflow conditions that can allow arbitrary code to be executed remotely with local SYSTEM privileges on Windows. These issues affect the BrightStor Backup Agent Service, the Job Engine Service, and the Discovery Service in multiple BrightStor ARCserve Backup application and backup agents for Windows and the Base product. The following products are affected:

BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.5 SP1 and below (SP2 does not have this vulnerability.)
BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.1
BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11 for Windows
BrightStor Enterprise Backup 10.5
BrightStor ARCserve Backup v9.01

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

These security updates should be applied to any Windows server or client running a BrightStor ARCserve Backup or BrightStor Enterprise Backup backup agent, application agent, or the base product. The security updates can be downloaded from:

BAB r11.5 (SP1 only) -
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82860
BAB r11.1 -
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82863
BAB v9.01 -
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82856
BEB v10.5 -
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82858

For more information, please see our security announcement page at:
supportconnectw.ca.com/public/storage/infodocs/basbr-secnotice.asp.

CA Acquires XOsoft™, Leading Provider of Continuous Application Availability Software
CA extended its storage management portfolio with the acquisition of privately-held XOsoft, Inc. XOsoft's integrated data replication, continuous data protection (CDP), and failover software helps organizations meet disaster recovery and business continuance objectives by ensuring the protection and availability of mission critical data and applications.

The acquisition enables CA to provide customers with the complete continuum of recovery management solutions they require today, and to meet their future information and data protection needs. There are a variety of issues driving IT organizations to implement more rigorous enterprise-wide data protection, more effective service continuity measures, and more rapid recovery procedures. The issues include an increasing dependency of business operations on high-performance information, data and storage infrastructure; expanding government guidelines for storing and ensuring the integrity of business data; and a growing need to rapidly recover in the event storage systems are compromised, enabling continued business operations.

XOsoft solutions complement CA's BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup solutions, enabling customers to reduce the risk of data loss, relieve pressure on time-consuming backups, and accelerate recovery of critical business services. CA plans to integrate XOsoft's technology with BrightStor ARCserve Backup to continually deliver deeper integration and build toward a next-generation information protection platform that unifies and simplifies all enterprise recovery operations.

For more information, please go to: ca.com/Press/PressRelease.aspx?CID=91079 or attend the free webcast on October 26, 2006. (See details under Special Events.)

CA to Deliver Integration Between Traditional Backup and Continuous Application Availability Solutions
CA will soon be delivering integration between BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup and the continuous application availability solutions recently acquired from XOsoft™. The integration will offer customers the combined benefits of traditional backup with continuous data protection (CDP), replication, automatic failover, and disaster recovery testing technologies. IT organizations can leverage this combined solution to implement comprehensive data protection, business continuity, and disaster recovery strategies while reducing management complexity and costs.

BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.5 for UNIX and Linux - Service Pack 2
Now Available
Service Pack 2 will update BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.5 or r11.5 SP1 for Linux, Mainframe Linux, or UNIX to build 2377. Service Pack 2 contains all previously released patches and service packs, and is for all languages.

These updates are available now at:

Linux:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO81483
Mainframe Linux:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO81484
AIX:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO81410
Solaris:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO81481
HP:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO81485
Tru64:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO81647

BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.1 for NetWare - Service Pack 2 Now Available
Service Pack 2 will update BrightStor ARCserve Backup r11.1 or r11.1 SP1 for NetWare to build 961. Service Pack 2 contains all previously released patches and service packs, and is for all languages.

This update is available now at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO81791.

BrightStor® High Availability r11.1 - Service Pack 1 Now Available
Service Pack 1 for BrightStor High Availability r11.1 is now available. Service Pack 1 contains all previously released patches.

This update is available now at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82677.

BrightStor® CA-Vtape™ Peer-to-Peer Optional Added Feature
BrightStor CA-Vtape will soon be offering an optional added feature making it possible to implement a BrightStor CA-Vtape Peer-to-Peer (P2P) mechanism. P2P will make it possible for one or more BrightStor CA-Vtape standalone sites to exploit a centralized site's physical tape, thereby eliminating the need for locally available physical tape capabilities at each site. With P2P, BrightStor CA-Vtape will be able to run in an environment with limited local cache (DASD) and potentially no local physical tape capabilities.

BrightStor CA-Vtape systems will be able to be configured to use a central BrightStor
CA-Vtape system over a TCP/IP network as a "server" in place of using local Virtual Tape drives and local physical tapes. Using client-server and peer-to-peer protocols, a "remote" BrightStor CA-Vtape system configured in such a way would transmit application's data in real time to a central BrightStor CA-Vtape server over a TCP/IP network, where the central BrightStor CA-Vtape server would first cache and then offload these volume containers onto physical tape at the central location.

This capability enables BrightStor CA-Vtape customers to completely centralize their physical tape processing and produce remote sites that are optionally completely without any physical tape. By implementing the transmission of Virtual Tape volume containers to the server in real-time, local DASD cache requirement for these remote BrightStor CA-Vtape sites can also be diminished as the local cache copies can be removed immediately as soon as the volume containers have been successfully sent to the central server.

P2P has special advantages to disaster recovery operations and sites looking for silo consolidations in between multiple independent sysplexes. There will be no need for costly channel extensions for the physical tapes or the need to create duplex externalized copies for the D/R site.

If you would be interested in participating in early testing of this exciting new option of BrightStor CA-Vtape, please contact John Hill, Director Product Management, at John.Hill12@ca.com.

Product Updates

CA Message Manager Web Access (Assentor Mailbox Manager)
SP 1 Hot Fix Rollup for CA Message Manager Web 1.1.6 has been posted at:
supportconnectw.ca.com/public/msgmgrwebacc/downloads/msgmgrwebacc-solpatch.asp.

BrightStor® SAN Designer
QO82608 - Content update 4 for BrightStor SAN Designer r11.5.
This is available for download at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82608.

BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.5 for Windows
QO82900 - Update to add support for VM Protection with VCB (VMware Consolidated Backup) on Windows 2003 Server Proxy to backup VM machines that reside on SAN Attached devices.
This is available for download at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82900.

QO82963 - Tape engine/added device support update. Adds support for additional devices and addresses tape engine-related issues.
This is available for download at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82963.

BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.5 for Linux
QO82145 - Fix for the Tapecopy utility to resolve a problem that can result in data corruption when used with multiplexing tapes that span multiple media.
This is available for download at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82145.

QO82899 - Update to add support for VM Protection using VCB utilities that reside on ESX Server 3.0 Service Console.
This is available for download at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82899.

QO82970 - Tape engine/added device support update. Adds support for additional devices and addresses tape engine-related issues.
This is available for download at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82970.

BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.1 for Linux
QO82140 - Fix for the Tapecopy utility to resolve a problem that can result in data corruption when used with multiplexing tapes that span multiple media.
This is available for download at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82140.

BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.1 for UNIX
QO82142 and QO82139 - Fix for the Tapecopy utility to resolve a problem that can result in data corruption when used with multiplexing tapes that span multiple media.
These are available for download at:
AIX:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82142.
Solaris:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82139.

QO82505 - Tape engine/added device support update for HP. Adds support for additional devices and addresses tape engine-related issues.
This is available for download at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82505.

HIPERs: High Impact/Pervasive Problems (09/01 through 09/30)
BrightStor® CA-1®-MVS Tape Management
Release: 11.5
QO82188
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82188
Release: 11.0
QO82180
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO82180

BrightStor® CA-Vantage™
Release: 11.5
QI82018
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QI82018

Release: 11.1
QI82017
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QI82017

General Information

BrightStor® CA-Allocate™: Coming Soon... Additional SMF Interfaces
BrightStor CA-Allocate will soon provide you with the ability to conditionally write SMF records to track Reduce To Fit recovery activities. This is the second in a series of activities that you will be able to track with SMF records.

Sysparm PLSSMF02 will be used to activate the writing of an SMF record to note the success or failure of a Reduce To Fit operation on either the creation or expansion of a data set that would otherwise fail due to lack of sufficient free space. The value of PLSSMF02 will be used as the SMF user record number. To enable writing of SMF records, you will specify a valid non-zero value for PLSSMF02 prior to an INSTALL or PARMREF operation. The valid values will be defined as the documented values reflected by IBM documentation for SMF user record numbers. Currently, that range is 128 through 255.

The PTF that will deliver this functionality will describe the record layouts in detail. Tracking of other activities will be added in the future as they are requested.

Changes in the Message Handling in BrightStor® CA-Vantage™ Storage Resource Manager and for BrightStor® CA-Vantage™ GMI Users
PTF's QO81579 and QO81580 (for r11.1) and PTF's QO81581 and QO81582 (for r11.5) introduce changes in the BrightStor CA-Vantage message handling. We started implementing changes in the message handling area roughly a year back; these additional changes are to remove the "old" message path.

With these PTFs, //MSGLIB DD DISP=SHR,DSN=ca.vantarg.SAMMSGS needs to be added to the SAMS procedure before restarting BrightStor CA-Vantage. If DD-name MSGLIB is missing; BrightStor CA-Vantage will stop after issuing the message:

"VAN1534 MSGLIB DD Not Found - initialization stops".

The new message path has been used by new customers since release r11.1 was GA and by customers who have already added the MSGLIB DD to their SAMS procedure.

What does this mean for you as a user?

Message text and handling of messages are now done using XML which allows for more flexibility in text lengths, etc.
Some of the system parameters related to message handling have become obsolete.
There is a new SAMMSGS library distributed that contains one member per message. This PDS can be a PDSE library.
Parameters have been placed in its own CAMPARMS member in the SAMMSGS library. Appropriate defaults have been set.
If you have translated or changed messages to your own local language, you have to redo this change in the new SAMMSGS library instead of the old Parmdlib MSGnn members. You should observe that maintenance and new releases may replace the original message in the factory shipped SAMMSGS library. Another option here could be to keep your updated messages in its own library and concatenate this library in front of the factory shipped SAMMSGS library to avoid that maintenance will overlay your updated messages.
Future development will allow you to view better message explanation through the user interfaces where reason and action will be displayed.
A new Journal file has been introduced.

In order to not lose messages when the BrightStor CA-Vantage subsystem is canceled or because of other hang situations in the z/OS system, the messages are also written to a journal data set in parallel with the ordinary logging. The journal will be emptied when the logging is done. At startup, the journal is read and, if anything is found, it is put to the log and the journal is cleared again.

BrightStor® ARCserve® Backup r11.5 for Windows: Best Practices Guide for VMware ESX Server Backup
The Best Practices Guide for VMware ESX Server Backup provides you with best practices that you can use with BrightStor ARCserve Backup and VMware ESX Server 2.5.X to help ensure that virtual machines are protected as securely as any other server in your environment. This document covers the most common methods used for data backups on virtual machines, and any considerations relating to the different methods.

This document is available for download at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=TEC404082.

BrightStor® Storage Resource Manager: What To Do When the Linux Client Agent Won't Work
The Portmapper may not be started. Do the following to resolve this issue.

$rpcinfo -p <agent server name or or IP>

(This command will allow you to see the portmapper status.)

Rpcinfo: can't contact portmapper: RPC: Remote system error - connection refused

If you receive the above error message, then run the following commands:

service portmap start
Starting portmap:

s99rcsd start
(command to start the Storage Resource Manager (SRM) agent)

This document can also be found online at:
supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=TEC407361.

Special Events

Upcoming Webcast: Introducing CA XOsoft™ - The Next Step in CA's Storage Solutions - October 26, 2006 - Noon - 1:00 p.m. ET
Join CA's Storage experts and learn how to take your storage solution to the "next step".
CA XOsoft award-winning solutions provide customers with continuous data protection, replication, and application fail-over software to help ensure 24x7 protection and availability of key business applications and data.

We'll discuss features and benefits of the CA XOsoft solutions, the value they bring to your business, and how they can help you meet constantly evolving compliance, business continuity, and disaster needs.

Key topics and product differentiators:

Zero downtime to implement
Remote Installation
Assured Recovery
Rewind Technology (true CDP)

To register, please go to: ca.com/events/eventdetail.aspx?CID=21096&CevID=93385.

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