This version of the Network Appliance Virtual File Manager product (VFM) provides several new features. This version also improves usability and extends several capabilities. Many of these improvements were made in direct response to suggestions from our customers. This document outlines why you should install this version, provides additions to the documentation, and identifies the known or resolved issues.

VFM is an integrated data management solution that logically aggregates distributed file storage and provides policies that automate data management functions, such as heterogeneous migration, local and remote replication, client failover, capacity optimization, tiered data management, disk-to-disk archival, and data classification and reporting. VFM allows you to perform these tasks with minimal manual involvement and without causing client downtime.

The following sections outline the important new features and functions provided by this version.

This version provides 64-bit Windows operating system support. This support adds to the extensive list of supported operating systems and environments.

Many improvements were made to significantly extend the scalability of migration and replication operations. These improvements will help you meet your growing storage environment requirements. In addition to these scalability improvements, this version provides several other enhancements to extend the migration and replication support:

This version adds a server configuration report, which provides a list of computers managed by VFM, as well as the amount of storage used on each computer.

In this version, the documentation has been consolidated into a single, comprehensive Administrator’s Guide. This content is also provided in the online help, which provides a powerful full-text search capability.

This version of VFM resolves several previously-reported issues.

In some cases, VFM creates temporary files during copy operations and then renames those temporary files after the copy is successful. If the copy and rename fails, extra temporary files can be left on the system. This version resolves this issue.

Migration tasks with large amounts of historical data can cause slow response times in the VFM client. This version improves the performance of the VFM client in several areas. In addition, the History tab within migration tasks displays additional statistics about the files copied.

When a replication policy fails, VFM uses the alternate schedule. In this case, the policy could run past the time specified by the stop at this time option on the Schedule tab. This version resolves this issue by enforcing the timeline specified.

If nosnapdir is on for a volume on a filer, snapshot replication fails. This version ensures snapshots created in these conditions are correctly deleted after the failure.

During some replication activities, the NTFS Change Journal not used message was incorrectly reported in the event details. This version resolves this issue.

After manually advancing to the final phase using the Now option, VFM ran the first task in incremental mode, which could cause other tasks not to run. This version resolves this issue by running all remaining tasks when you select the Now option.

The following adjustments were made to how storage load balancing policies are processed:

In previous versions, migration policies with the update namespace action set to retarget the links could update the wrong target for links with multiple targets. This version resolves this issue.

In some cases, the task list in the agent management area of the VFM client did not display all tasks. This version resolves this issue.

In some cases, exclusions were not properly handled during file difference replication operations. The replication agent performed case-sensitive comparisons. This version resolves this issue by making this comparison processing ignore case.

In previous versions, port scanning activities could interfere with .NET support and stop the VFM server. This version resolves this issue.

In some cases, error reporting did not provide enough information. This version resolves this issue by providing additional information to help you resolve the error.

The documentation is currently up to date. For more information about system requirements, installing the product, and using the product, refer to the Administrator’s Guide.

With this version of VFM, the replication agent is now installed in a different location than in previous product versions.

This section defines how to get additional support and information.

You can contact Network Appliance technical support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can receive assistance either through the Web site at http://now.netapp.com or by telephone. For more information about our support services, refer to http://www.netapp.com/support.

The following issues are currently being researched.

For non-default instances of MSDE and SQL Server Express, TCP is disabled by default. If you are using a non-default instance of MSDE or SQL Server Express for your VFM installation, complete the following steps before you install VFM. Otherwise, the installation process will fail with SQL connection errors.

Once you have completed these steps, you can install VFM and use the non-default instance.

When you try to upgrade the VFM server on a computer where an instance of MSDE is already installed, the following error message is displayed:

To avoid this issue, install the VFM server on a computer where an instance of MSDE is not already installed.

VFM does not support non-ascii characters in the source or destination names specified in NFS replication policies.

In an archival migration policy, the Only migrate data referenced through namespace option can cause VFM to exclude migration candidates, even if the Always migrate option is selected. To avoid this issue, do not select the Only migrate data referenced through namespace option and specifically select the data you want to migrate.

The VFM server listens on ports 6001 and 6005. Changing ports through agent management causes communication issues. To avoid these issues, use the default ports.

In some cases during file difference replication operations, network errors can cause the assisting replication agent to hold locks on the destination files. You may need to restart the assisting replication agent to release these locks.

When processing storage load balancing policies, VFM does not move data to a target computer if the storage usage on that computer is above the defined High-Mark. However, if the storage usage is below the defined High-Mark, VFM may move data onto that computer, which could cause storage usage to go above the defined High-Mark. This data movement can cause issues on filers when the storage usage is more than 95%.

In certain configurations, the user and effective user fields in events generated by the VFM server are displayed as N/A by the client. For example, this issue occurs when the VFM client and server reside in separate domains with a one-way forest trust by the server domain of the client domain, and the client and server are running under different accounts in the two domains.

In installations with large namespaces, such as those with thousands of links, the VFM client requires more time to start than in installations with smaller configurations.

In some cases, such as configurations with many migration policy subtasks, the VFM server service can require 15 minutes or more to start and load all the policy-related data.

If you are using the replication agent to replicate a large number of files, such as greater than 20 million files, ensure the computer where the replication agent is installed has 4GB or more of memory.

If you are running a large number of migration tasks, such as more than 1,000 migration tasks, ensure you have adequate CPU speed and at least 4GB of memory on the computer where the VFM server is installed.

When you upgrade the VFM 6.0 server to VFM 6.1, the replication agent version displays in Agent Manager as the previous version and the replication agent status displays as unknown. After you upgrade a VFM 6.0 replication agent to VFM 6.1, the replication agent version displays the correct version and the replication agent status displays as running. However, the replication agent may not be running on the Linux computer. To resolve this issue, restart the replication agent on the Linux computer in Agent Manager.

Cascaded domain-based roots appear as computers in the physical view if any of their links are themselves targets of links in a managed namespace.

Time differences between the VFM console computer and computers where the VFM replication agent has been deployed affect the order in which events are displayed in the VFM console.

Changes made to domain-based roots can take time to appear in the VFM console, since the changes take some time to propagate through the Active Directory domain controllers.

If the computer hosting a new target is online, the directory being targeted by the link must exist or VFM displays a “network resource was not found” message.

When you are modifying link targets, if the computer hosting the new link target is offline, you can still re-target the link to the offline computer. This implementation allows you to configure your namespace while computers are offline, but provides additional validation of the configuration if the targeted computer is online.

Share names containing apostrophes might prevent VFM from accessing data on the share. The symptom is an “access-denied” error when attempting to migrate data to or from the share.

Certain combinations of file permissions can cause VFM to report “access-denied” errors during the evaluation phase of a data transfer. However, the evaluation will succeed if you allow it to continue.

Internet Explorer 6 limitations cause changes to print orientation to be applied to the specified printer instead of only the print item itself. To resolve this issue, restore the orientation for the selected printer back to the desired default setting after the report has been printed. This limitation is not present in Internet Explorer 5.5.

When VFM is installed on a Windows 2000 computer, limitations in Windows 2000 prevent VFM from managing DFS roots on Windows Server 2003 systems that host more than one DFS root. To manage roots on a Windows Server 2003 system hosting more than one DFS root, you must install VFM on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003.

Antivirus software configured to prevent scripts from running interferes with scripts used in VFM during product installation, as well as the application snapshot feature and customized scripts configured for use with VFM storage policies. To prevent this issue, configure virus scanning software correctly so VFM can be installed and the scripts associated with the product can function.

If you upgrade VFM using terminal services, you may encounter problems printing from VFM to PDF files. To prevent this issue, upgrade VFM from the computer console and not through terminal services.

Due to changes in the implementation of DFS roots in Windows Server 2003, BLOB size is reported as zero for roots hosted on Windows Server 2003 in the VFM Namespace Properties report.

Incorrect name resolution configurations in DNS can cause problems when managing or referencing domain-based DFS roots. For information about how to diagnose and correct DNS name resolution problems, refer to the VFM documentation.

If you initiate a manual scan for a Namespace Creation policy and no items are found, you must click Cancel to close the instruction dialog box.

When copying files from mixed-security mode locations on filers, ensure permissions are set so VFM can read security information from the system. UNIX permissions are not transferred. Errors occur if VFM cannot read the security settings from the source data.

If you perform the following steps during home folder policy creation, VFM does not show users without home folders:

When the target monitoring schedule runs, server disaster recovery policies incorrectly run associated policies instead of running associated policies only when a failover is required. This problem causes extra namespace update activity.

Links with two targets, one each on the primary and secondary servers, cannot be dragged to the Active Link list of a server disaster recovery policy. Instead, right-click a link in the Nonactive Links list and click Move to Active Links List.

UNIX replication agents cannot be deployed by VFM monitoring agents. This can result in an unexpected replication agent performing the data transfer.

To prevent this issue, use Agent Management to manually deploy the UNIX replication agent to the source or destination computers before starting the policy. On the Tools menu, click Agent Management and follow the online help instructions to deploy a UNIX replication agent.

The event history message that appears when a UNIX replication agent tries to access an NFS export on a Celerra system contains text and hexadecimal code. The hex error code matches the text displayed in the message and does not provide any additional information.

The VFM Browse dialog box incorrectly shows two copies of the same root when the NETBIOS domain name differs from the host name portion of the fully qualified domain name.

NFS file inclusions and exclusions in VFM policies may not function correctly. When configuring policies that use includes/excludes, assess replication results carefully.

If you want to specify directory inclusions and exclusions when running the Large Files report, you must include the asterisk character (*) immediately following the name of the directories you want to include or exclude from the report.

VFM is compatible with PuTTY suite 0.55. Later versions of PuTTY introduced compatibility issues with VFM, so only programs from suite 0.55 should be installed.

When you try to upgrade a monitoring agent installed on a computer that is hosting a replication agent, the upgrade fails and you see the following error message: