StorSimple 8000 Series Update 2.2 release notes
Caution
ACTION REQUIRED: StorSimple Data Manager, StorSimple Device Manager, StorSimple 1200, and StorSimple 8000 have reached their end of support. End of support details were published in 2019 on the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy and Azure Communications pages. Additional notifications were also sent via email and posted on the Azure portal and StorSimple documentation site. Contact Microsoft Support for additional details.
Overview
The following release notes describe the new features and identify the critical open issues for StorSimple 8000 Series Update 2.2. They also contain a list of the StorSimple software updates included in this release.
Update 2.2 can be applied to any StorSimple device running Release (GA) or Update 0.1 through Update 2.1. The device version associated with Update 2.2 is 6.3.9600.17708.
Review the information contained in the release notes before you deploy the update in your StorSimple solution.
Important
- Update 2.2 has software only updates. It takes approximately 1.5-2 hours to install this update.
- If you are running Update 2.1, we recommend that you apply Update 2.2 as soon as possible.
- For new releases, you may not see updates immediately because we do a phased rollout of the updates. Wait a few days, and then scan for updates again as these will become available soon.
What's new in Update 2.2
The following key improvements have been made in Update 2.2.
- Automated space reclamation optimization – When data is deleted on thinly provisioned volumes, the unused storage blocks need to be reclaimed. This release has improved the space reclamation process from the cloud resulting in the unused space becoming available faster as compared to the previous versions.
- Snapshot performance enhancements – Update 2.2 has improved the time to process a cloud snapshot in certain scenarios where large volumes are being used and there's minimal to no data churn. A scenario that would benefit from this enhancement would be the archive volumes.
- Hardening of Support package gathering – There have been improvements in the way the Support package is gathered and uploaded in this release.
- Update reliability improvements – This release has bug fixes that result in an improved Update reliability.
Issues fixed in Update 2.2
The following table provides a summary of issues that were fixed in Updates 2.2 and 2.1.
| No | Feature | Issue | Applies to physical device | Applies to virtual device |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Host performance | In the earlier release, host-side performance issues were observed during the creation of a locally pinned volume and during the conversion of a tiered volume to a locally pinned volume. These issues are fixed in this release thereby resulting in an improvement in the host performance during the volume creation and conversion procedures. | Yes | No |
| 2 | Locally pinned volumes | In rare instances, the system would crash when creating a locally pinned volume. This bug has been fixed in this release. | Yes | No |
| 3 | Tiering | There were sporadic crashes when the metadata for the StorSimple Cloud Appliances (8010 and 8020) tiered to the cloud. This issue is fixed in this release. | No | Yes |
| 4 | Snapshot creation | There were issues related to the creation of incremental snapshots in scenarios with large volumes and minimal to no data churn. These issues are fixed in this release. | Yes | Yes |
| 5 | Openstack authentication | When using Openstack as the cloud service provider, the user would run into an infrequent bug related to the authentication where the JSON parser resulted in a crash. This bug is fixed in this release. | Yes | No |
| 6 | Host-side copy | In earlier versions of software, an infrequent bug related to the ODX timing was seen when copying the data from one volume to another volume. This would result in a controller failover and the system could potentially go into Recovery mode. This bug is fixed in this release. | Yes | No |
| 7 | Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) | In the previous versions of software, there were several instances of web proxy failure with the exception “<ManagementException> Provider load failure”. This bug was attributed to a WMI memory leak and is now fixed. | Yes | No |
| 8 | Update | In certain rare instances, in the previous versions of software, the user received a "CisPowershellHcsscripterror" when trying to scan or install updates. This issue is fixed in this release. | Yes | Yes |
| 9 | Support package | In this release, there have been improvements to the way the Support package is gathered and uploaded. | Yes | Yes |
Known issues in Update 2.2
The following table provides a summary of known issues in this release.
| No. | Feature | Issue | Comments / work around | Applies to physical device | Applies to virtual device |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Disk quorum | In rare instances, if most disks in the EBOD enclosure of an 8600 device are disconnected resulting in no disk quorum, then the storage pool will go offline. It will stay offline even if the disks are reconnected. | You'll need to reboot the device. If the issue persists, please contact Microsoft Support for next steps. | Yes | No |
| 2 | Incorrect controller ID | When a controller replacement is performed, controller 0 may show up as controller 1. During controller replacement, when the image is loaded from the peer node, the controller ID can show up initially as the peer controller’s ID. In rare instances, this behavior may also be seen after a system reboot. | No user action is required. This situation will resolve itself after the controller replacement is complete. | Yes | No |
| 3 | Storage accounts | Using the Storage service to delete the storage account is an unsupported scenario. This will lead to a situation in which user data can't be retrieved. | Yes | Yes | |
| 4 | Device failover | Multiple failovers of a volume container from the same source device to different target devices isn't supported. Failover from a single dead device to multiple devices will make the volume containers on the first failed over device lose data ownership. After such a failover, these volume containers will appear or behave differently when you view them in the Azure classic portal. | Yes | No | |
| 5 | Installation | During StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint installation, you need to provide a device IP in order for the install to finish successfully. | Yes | No | |
| 6 | Web proxy | If your web proxy configuration has HTTPS as the specified protocol, then your device-to-service communication will be affected and the device will go offline. Support packages will also be generated in the process, consuming significant resources on your device. | Make sure that the web proxy URL has HTTP as the specified protocol. For more information, go to Configure web proxy for your device. | Yes | No |
| 7 | Web proxy | If you configure and enable web proxy on a registered device, then you'll need to restart the active controller on your device. | Yes | No | |
| 8 | High cloud latency and high I/O workload | When your StorSimple device encounters a combination of high cloud latencies (order of seconds) and high I/O workload, the device volumes go into a degraded state, and the I/Os may fail with a "device not ready" error. | You'll need to manually reboot the device controllers or perform a device failover to recover from this situation. | Yes | No |
| 9 | Azure PowerShell | When you use the StorSimple cmdlet Get-AzureStorSimpleStorageAccountCredential | Select-Object -First 1 -Wait to select the first object so that you can create a new VolumeContainer object, the cmdlet returns all the objects. | Wrap the cmdlet in parentheses as follows: (Get-Azure-StorSimpleStorageAccountCredential) | Select-Object -First 1 -Wait | Yes | Yes |
| 10 | Migration | When multiple volume containers are passed for migration, the ETA for latest backup is accurate only for the first volume container. Additionally, parallel migration will start after the first four backups in the first volume container are migrated. | We recommend that you migrate one volume container at a time. | Yes | No |
| 11 | Migration | After the restore, volumes aren't added to the backup policy or the virtual disk group. | You'll need to add these volumes to a backup policy in order to create backups. | Yes | Yes |
| 12 | Migration | After the migration is complete, the 5000/7000 series device must not access the migrated data containers. | We recommend that you delete the migrated data containers after the migration is complete and committed. | Yes | No |
| 13 | Clone and DR | A StorSimple device running Update 1 can't clone or perform disaster recovery to a device running pre-update 1 software. | You'll need to update the target device to Update 1 to allow these operations | Yes | Yes |
| 14 | Migration | Configuration backup for migration may fail on a 5000-7000 series device when there are volume groups with no associated volumes. | Delete all the empty volume groups with no associated volumes and then retry the configuration backup. | Yes | No |
| 15 | Azure PowerShell cmdlets and locally pinned volumes | You can't create a locally pinned volume via Azure PowerShell cmdlets. (Any volume you create via Azure PowerShell will be tiered.) | Always use the StorSimple Manager service to configure locally pinned volumes. | Yes | No |
| 16 | Space available for locally pinned volumes | If you delete a locally pinned volume, the space available for new volumes may not be updated immediately. The StorSimple Manager service updates the local space available approximately every hour. | Wait for an hour before you try to create the new volume. | Yes | No |
| 17 | Locally pinned volumes | Your restore job exposes the temporary snapshot backup in the Backup Catalog, but only during the restore job. Additionally, it exposes a virtual disk group with prefix tmpCollection on the Backup Policies page, but only during the restore job. | This behavior can occur if your restore job has only locally pinned volumes or a mix of locally pinned and tiered volumes. If the restore job includes only tiered volumes, then this behavior won't occur. No user intervention is required. | Yes | No |
| 18 | Locally pinned volumes | If you cancel a restore job and a controller failover occurs immediately afterwards, the restore job will show Failed instead of Canceled. If a restore job fails and a controller failover occurs immediately afterwards, the restore job will show Canceled instead of Failed. | This behavior can occur if your restore job has only locally pinned volumes or a mix of locally pinned and tiered volumes. If the restore job includes only tiered volumes, then this behavior won't occur. No user intervention is required. | Yes | No |
| 19 | Locally pinned volumes | If you cancel a restore job or if a restore fails and then a controller failover occurs, an additional restore job appears on the Jobs page. | This behavior can occur if your restore job has only locally pinned volumes or a mix of locally pinned and tiered volumes. If the restore job includes only tiered volumes, then this behavior won't occur. No user intervention is required. | Yes | No |
| 20 | Locally pinned volumes | If you try to convert a tiered volume (created and cloned with Update 1.2 or earlier) to a locally pinned volume and your device is running out of space or there's a cloud outage, then the clone(s) can be corrupted. | This problem occurs only with volumes that were created and cloned with pre-Update 2.1 software. This should be an infrequent scenario. | ||
| 21 | Volume conversion | Don't update the ACRs attached to a volume while a volume conversion is in progress (tiered to locally pinned or vice versa). Updating the ACRs could result in data corruption. | If needed, update the ACRs prior to the volume conversion and don't make any further ACR updates while the conversion is in progress. |
Controller and firmware updates in Update 2.2
This release has software-only updates. However, if you're updating from a version prior to Update 2, you'll need to install driver, Storport, Spaceport, and (in some cases) disk firmware updates on your device.
For more information on how to install the driver, Storport, Spaceport, and disk firmware updates, see install Update 2.2 on your StorSimple device.
Virtual device updates in Update 2.2
This update can't be applied to the virtual device. New virtual devices will need to be created.
Next step
Learn how to install Update 2.2 on your StorSimple device.
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