Double-Take Version 4.4.1.0.1352 Standard for Windows, May 12, 2005 Release Notes (C) 1996-2005 NSI Software, Inc. Check the readme file on the product updates download page on the NSI Software web site for the latest readme file. The readme file contained in the self-extracting zip file or on the CD may not contain all of the most recent information. Contents -------- I. Overview II. Installation Notes III. Known Issues IV. Documentation Notes V. Contact Information VI. License and Copyright Information I. Overview ----------- Double-Take 4.4.1 is an updated release. It supersedes all previous releases but may not include all product changes provided as hotfixes for specific issues. (Hotfixes are only distributed by technical support to address specific customer issues and can be identified by any non-zero number in the 4th position of the version number, for example, 4.3.2.5.1234 indicates hotfix 5.) If you are using a hotfix, please check the NSI Software product updates page for more information or contact technical support to determine whether the hotfix you are using has been included in this product release before installing. This release includes, but may not be limited to, the modifications listed in this section. - Server groups - You can now create groups within the Double-Take Management Console which allow you to organize your Double-Take servers into logical units that meet your needs. - Failover Monitoring - You can now choose to monitor a source using various communications methods. You can also choose to disable monitoring, in which case you will be responsible for identifying when a failure has occurred and initiating failover manually. - Target reboot without a mirror - Functionality has been added to allow you to conduct a planned reboot of your target without requiring the data to be remirrored. - Orphan files - New orphan file DTCL commands have been added to allow you to configure orphan file removal with every mirror or verification process. II. Installation Notes ---------------------- 1. If you want to perform unattended installations, complete instructions are available in the Getting Started guide in the "Installing Double-Take automatically" section. 2. After installing Double-Take, refer to the following manuals for information on using Double-Take. INSTLWIN.PDF - The Getting Started guide is located in the directory where you installed Double-Take and also in the \docs directory on the CD. This manual contains server requirements, installation and upgrade instructions, an overview of the Double-Take clients, and basic connection information to get you started with Double-Take. DTUSER.PDF - The User's Guide is located in the directory where you installed Double-Take and also in the \docs directory on the CD. This manual contains a product overview and step-by-step instructions for each Double-Take feature. The manual is also a reference for Double-Take error messages, program settings, and DTCL commands. EVALUATIONGUIDE.PDF - The Evaluation Guide is a step-by-step process which walks you through installing Double-Take and evaluating the major product features by actually creating and using test data with a Double-Take connection. To view the .PDF manuals, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have Acrobat, you can download it free from Adobe at: www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html 3. Any files created by the Microsoft Windows Installer during the Double-Take installation can be safely deleted after an uninstall. 4. Some Double-Take files will be installed outside of the directory that you select for installation. These files are identified below. The following files are installed in the \%SYSTEMROOT%\Installer\ {F732639D-0899-11D4-9327-00A02471D5EC}\ directory. - DTMgmtCon.exe.exe - FailoverControlCenter1.exe - ManagementConsole1.exe The following files are installed in the \%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\ directory. - msvcp70.dll - msvcr70.dll The following file is installed in the \%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\ ServerAppliance\mui\0409\ directory. - dtwpamsg.dll The following files are installed in the \%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\ drivers\ directory. - dblhook.sys - nsifiltr.sys - nsirecog.sys - sndpackt.sys If you are installing Double-Take on an MSCS node, the following files are installed in the \%SYSTEMROOT%\Cluster directory. - DTResUtility.exe - dbltkres.dll - dbltkresex.dll 5. When upgrading to version 4.4.1, the new toolbar icons for the server group functionality will not be displayed. You can still access all server group functionality through the menus. 6. If you are running Double-Take version 4.4.0.1290 and Microsoft Installer version 3.0 is installed on your server, you may experience a Dr. Watson during the 4.4.1 installation if you select the option to check for an updated version of Double-Take via the Web. This is a known issue with Microsoft Installer version 3.0. The Double-Take install will continue after the Dr. Watson error. You can verify your version of Microsoft Installer by checking the version of the file :\windows\system32\msiexec.exe. 7. If during the installation you receive the message that the wizard was interrupted before the installation could be completed, you will need to delete the registry value DefaultAccessPermissions under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole key in order to install Double-Take. This registry setting denies permissions for retrieving and setting property values. Deleting this registry setting will not have a negative impact on your server. 8. If the installation or upgrade does not complete and rolls back automatically, you may have an issue with Microsoft's XML install modules. A roll back occurrs if 8.3 file name support is disabled and there is a long file name component in the path to the temp directory. To work around this issue, you can enable 8.3 support or change your TEMP environment variable. See Microsoft Knowledge Base article 838437 for more details. III. Known Issues ----------------- 1. Security a. When using Windows NT Terminal Server and Citrix MetaFrame, the Double-Take security groups are created during the Double-Take installation, but no members are added to the groups. After installing Double-Take and rebooting, manually add the members by following the instructions in the Security chapter of the Double-Take User's Guide. b. Clear Cached Credentials in the Management Console Options is designed to flush the cache of any stored Double-Take security credentials and to remove any credentials from the Windows registry. If a machine is running Double-Take but is not accessible by the machine where you are clearing the credentials, the credentials stored in the registry will not be removed. To work around this issue, verify that all Double-Take machines are accessible by the client before clearing the credentials. 2. Clients (Management Console, Failover Control Center, and Text Client) a. If you are using DTCL from the command line, you will not be able to use non-alphanumeric characters in names, paths, directories, etc. because the quotation marks will cause a parse error. You can use non-alphanumeric characters enclosed in quotation marks in the Text Client (DTText), DTCL Interactive Entry (dtcl -i), and DTCL File Entry (dtcl -f). b. DTCL scripts must use ANSI coding. Do not use Unicode or other formats. c. If you are setting bandwidth limiting through the Management Console, do not specify 34% or higher with the Gigabit transport type. You can specify 33% or lower and Gigabit or any percentage with any other media type. d. If you have the Connection Manager open on a client machine and the Double-Take service on the source machine identified in the Connection Manager should happen to fail, the Management Console will stop responding. You will need to end the Management Console process and restart it. e. If you are using a Double-Take 4.4 Management Console to control a pre-4.3 Double-Take server, you may see 5-hr time inconsistencies in reporting and displays. This is a reporting and display issue only. f. If you are using long file names (more than several thousand characters long) you may want to disable the display of the "Last File Touched" statistic in the Management Console to improve response times. g. If you have many Double-Take connections (more than 6) and an error occurs on one or one is disconnected, the remaining connections may become inactive within the Management Console display. An inactive connection appears as if it is logged out and has a gray background. If this occurs, you will need to restart the Management Console. h. After failover and failback, the Management Console will not display "Removing Orphans" in the Mirror Status field of the Management Console even when orphan files are being removed or deleted. This is only a display issue in the right pane of the Management Console. If you have a Message Window for that machine open, you will see the orphan messages. i. If Double-Take transmission has been stopped (scheduled transmission, transmission stopped manually, or a transmission error) and the source has failed over while the transmission was stopped, the source machine will not be set to the restore required status. If you attempt to connect a replication set from this server without this status being set, you will not be prompted with a warning requiring you to confirm that you really want to connect the replication set. (The warning keeps you from overwriting data on the target which may potentially be newer because of the failover.) Additionally, the Management Console server icon will not identify the server as needing a restore either. If your source fails over while transmission has stopped, be sure to restore any newer data from your target back to your source before reconnecting the source replication set. j. Do not use a Double-Take 4.4 client to connect a source/target that is running Double-Take 4.0.0 or earlier. Each server must be running Double-Take 4.0.1 or later in order for the connection to be made successfully. If you are running Double-Take 4.0.0 or earlier, contact your vendor for an upgrade. k. If you are checking for an updated version of Double-Take through the Help, Check for Updates menu option in the Management Console, you will only be able to run the install directly from the download link on Windows 2003 servers with Service Pack 1. If you are running any other version of Windows (2003 no service packs, 2000 any service pack, or NT any service pack), you will need to save the download to disk and then run the install. l. Before moving a group that contains at least one subgroup with at least two hidden servers, you must unhide all of the servers. After the servers have been unhidden, move the group and then hide the servers again. Any attempt to move a group containing subgroups with hidden servers will result in an error when saving the workgroup or exiting the Management Console. 3. Monitoring Tools a. Performance Monitor should not be used remotely on systems running different operating systems (NT 4 to Windows 2000 or vice versa). Performance Monitor can be used remotely when using like systems (NT 4 to NT 4 or Windows 2000 to Windows 2000). b. The Double-Take log file will contain inaccurate numbers if you are performing a file differences restoration. This is a reporting issue only. c. If your replication set includes alternate data streams, the number of files and directories reported to be mirrored will be incorrect. It will be off by the number of streams contained in the files and directories. This is a reporting issue only. The streams will be mirrored correctly. 4. Active Directory a. If you are using Active Directory on Windows 2000, there are currently no messages logged indicating the success or failure of failover of the Active Directory host name. After failover, you can browse for the machine name to confirm the host name was added during failover. b. You may see a log message in the Double-Take log or the Windows Event Viewer stating that Active Directory registration has failed. This message is displayed even if the registration is successful. If registration has actually failed and you have Double-Take heartbeats disabled, your Double-Take servers will not be displayed in the Management Console server tree. Restart the Double-Take service to re-register it with Active Directory. c. If you are using a machine with multiple NICs and receive a Win32 error code 10014 indicting that Active Directory registration has failed, disable and re-enable the specified NIC. 5. Replication Sets a. Do not create replication sets that end with a period or select a target location that ends with a period. Otherwise, a mirror will never complete. b. Creating replication sets that only contain one file may cause unexpected results. If you need to replicate just one file, add a second file to the replication set to ensure the data is replicated to the correct location. (The second file can be a zero byte file if desired.) c. Do not exclude Microsoft Office temporary files from your replication set. When a user opens a Microsoft Office file, a temporary copy of the file is opened. When the user closes the file, the temporary file is renamed to the original file and the original file is deleted. Double-Take needs to replicate both the rename and the delete. If you have excluded the temporary files from your replication set, the rename operation will not be replicated, but the delete operation will be replicated. Therefore, you will have missing files on your target. d. If your source contains both a long file name and a separate file with the corresponding 8.3 file name, the files must be kept in two different locations on the source. This is because the operating system, not an application, controls the conversion from long file names to 8.3 file names. If the files are stored together in the same location on the source, the potential exists for the wrong file to get updated on the target. e. When creating replication sets, keep in mind that when recursive rules have the same type (include or exclude) and have the same root path, the top level recursive rule will take precedence over lower level non-recursive rules. For example, if you have c:\data included recursively and c:\data\logs included nonrecursively, the top level rule, c:\data, will take precedence and the rule c:\data\logs will be discarded. If the rules are different types (for example, c:\data is included and c:\data\logs is excluded), both rules will be applied as specified. 6. Double-Take Functionality a. If Double-Take is configured to move orphan files, the Double-Take log file will indicate that orphan files have been deleted even though they have actually been moved. This is a reporting issue only. b. If your replication set includes alternate data streams, use the checksum option when performing a difference mirror or verification to ensure that all alternate data streams are compared correctly. Additionally, if your alternate data streams are read-only, the times may be flagged as different if you are creating a verification report only. Initiating a remirror with the verification will correct this issue. c. If you have encrypted files in your replication set, empty encrypted files will be mirrored to the target, but if you copy or create an empty encrypted file within the replication set after mirroring is complete, the empty file will not be created on the target. As data is added to the empty file on the source, it will then be replicated to the target. d. If you change the Double-Take activation code from an invalid code to a valid code (for example, from a blank, wrong or expired evaluation code to a valid server code), you will need to stop and restart the Double-Take service on the target in order to initiate the failover module on the target. You do not have to restart the service on the source. You do not need to restart the service on either the source or target if you are changing from a valid code to a different valid code (for example, a current evaluation code to a valid server code). e. If you are replicating encrypted files, a temporary file is created on both the source and target servers. The temporary file is automatically created in the same directory as the Double-Take disk queues. If there is not enough room to create the temporary file, an out of disk space message will be logged. This message may be misleading and indicate that the drive where the encrypted file is located is out of space, when it actually may be the location where the temporary file is trying to be created that is out of disk space. f. If you change the Double-Take server ports while a connection is established, the connection will not automatically reconnect after the Double-Take service restarts. You will either have to disconnect the connection and establish a new one or change your ports back to the settings that were used when the connection was originally created. Note: After changing the Double-Take server ports, you must change the Management Console ports to match in order to access the server. See the Double-Take User's Guide for details. g. If you are attempting to restore across a NAT router, the Management Console must be on the same subnet as the source. If the Management Console is run from the target's subnet, the restoration will fail. 7. Operating System a. Do not use the Restart selection from the Windows Services applet to restart the Double-Take service. If you need to restart it, stop and then start it. b. If you are using Windows 2000 and convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, the media device name for the volume is affected. You will need to reboot the server to update Double-Take. c. If you using Double-Take 4.3 or later on Windows 2000, you may receive a WMI Event message 12103 indicating the registry path passed by a kernel mode driver is invalid. This warning message is caused by debug tracing and can be disregarded. IV. Documentation Notes ----------------------- 1. For a list of current Application Notes containing configuration procedures, visit the support web site at support.nsisoftware.com. 2. If delete orphans is enabled, directories and files that do NOT exist on the source and are excluded in the replication set using a wildcard rule will be removed from the target path. If you have data in your target path that does not exist on the source, do not use wildcard rules in your replication set. Manually select and deselect those files which should be included or excluded from your replication set. V. Contact Information ---------------------- 1. Product Updates Check your service agreement to determine which updates and new releases you may be eligible for. These updates can be obtained from our website at http://www.nsisoftware.com/sup/windows/updates. 2. Sales If you need maintenance renewal, an upgrade activation code, or other sales assistance, contact your reseller/distributor or an NSI Software sales representative at (888) 674-9495. 3. Technical Support Contact the technical support center identified on your service agreement. This is generally the reseller or distributor who you purchased your product from. If you do not have access to this agreement, contact NSI Software Technical Support and we can direct you to the correct service provider. To contact NSI Software Technical Support, you will need your serial number and activation code. Online support is available at support.nsisoftware.com. Customers within the U.S., please call (800) 775-8674. Customers outside of the U.S., please call +1 317 598-2066. 4. Documentation Please forward any comments or suggestions about NSI Software documentation to documentation@nsisoftware.com. VI. License and Copyright Information ------------------------------------- Double-Take, GeoCluster and NSI are registered trademarks of NSI Software, Inc. Balance is a trademark of NSI Software, Inc. Microsoft, Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks, or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. (C) 1996-2005 NSI Software, Inc.