> Essential > What's New > Commvault Platform Release 2023

Newsletter for New Features in Commvault Platform Release 2023

Features and enhancements that we want to highlight in this platform release are listed here, with a link to full documentation for the feature.

For your convenience, the Newsletter for New Features in Commvault Platform Release 2023 is also available in PDF format, New Features in Commvault Platform Release 2023.

For a comprehensive list of all new features, see New Features.

Complete Backup and Recovery

Access Tokens for Commvault REST APIs

You can authenticate and execute Commvault REST API requests by inserting an access token into the existing Authtoken header or into a Bearer Token header.
You can easily generate an access token for yourself and manage access tokens for users in the Command Center. In addition, you can specify an expiration date and the API scope that the token is valid for.
After creating a token, you can revoke the token at any time, modify the expiration date, and change the scope.

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Enhancements to Support of SAP for Oracle

Commvault support of SAP for Oracle:

  • Support for Indexing Version 2 for improved performance of browse and backup operations.
  • You can perform only full instance backup and restore of multi-tenant databases.
  • You can perform only full instance restore for in-place and database copy for SAP on Oracle RAC.

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Handle SAP Replication Takeovers for IntelliSnap Operations

With a change in cluster role after takeover in an SAP replication infrastructure, you can perform SAP HANA IntelliSnap operations without any manual intervention.

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Offline Replication of Snapshots for Dell EMC PowerStore

The offline replication of snapshots for the Dell EMC PowerStore storage array creates a replica copy of the primary snapshot of the local array on a remote array. When you perform a snapshot backup operation, the software creates a snapshot on the local array. To replicate the snapshot to the remote array, perform an auxiliary copy operation.

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Optimized Scans for Hadoop

You can enable the optimized scan method for faster Hadoop (HDFS) incremental backups. This method uses the Snapshots Difference Report operation to back up only the changed files from a snapshot.

When you enable the optimized scan method, scans and backups read data from the snapshots, to reduce the load on production data volumes.

Applicable Agents

Hadoop (HDFS)

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Protect Office 365 Exchange Online Mailboxes with Azure AD Security Defaults Enabled

You can discover, back up, and restore Office 365 Exchange Online mailboxes (but not public folders) with Azure AD security defaults enabled.

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Restore Tables from an Oracle or Oracle RAC Container Database

You can restore tables from an Oracle or Oracle RAC container database (CDB). You can restore tables back to the source database (in place) or to another database (out of place).

Applicable Agents

  • Oracle
  • Oracle RAC

More Information

Command Center:

CommCell Console:

Scan Backup Content for Malware to Perform Clean Recoveries

You can create a threat analysis plan to proactively scan backups for malware. With the threat analysis plan, you can identify and remove unwanted malware from your backup data, thus minimizing the impact of reinfection and impact on your recovery objectives.

Key Features

The Unusual file activity report for threat analysis summarizes the list of files containing anomalies.

Applicable Agents

File System Agent

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Updated Laptops User Interface

The Protect > Laptops page in the Command Center is now built using the React JavaScript library. Changes in the user interface include:

  • The laptop properties page now has an Overview tab and a Configuration tab.
  • If you own a laptop and are also associated with other laptops, you can use a list in the upper-right corner of the page to switch between the All view and Owned view.
    All laptop operations in the My data section of the Web Console are now available in the Owned view on the Protect > Laptops page in the Command Center.
  • A new Recovery points section appears on the Overview tab of the laptop properties page.

More Information

Use the CommCell Console To Specify Whether the Primary or Standby Oracle Data Guard Host Runs Data or Log Backups

You can create an Oracle Data Guard client from the CommCell Console by adding both the primary and standby instances to the configuration. This feature allows you to run database and archive log backups based on the instance role and to get a unified view of the database even after failover.

Applicable Agents

  • Oracle
  • Oracle RAC

More Information

Complete: Enable Service Providers

Authorization by Tenant Administrators for Business Logic Workflows

With multi-person authorization, you can require authorization from another user when someone tries to delete or restore backup data. Multi-person authorization can help protect against insider threats and bad actors using compromised credentials to perform data exfiltration or destructive tasks with the Commvault management interface.

When an MSP administrator installs a business logic workflow on their CommServe server, the authorization email goes to the default master user and the users listed on the GetAndProcessAuthorization workflow. As an alternative, an MSP administrator can select tenant administrators who belong to different companies to authorize the action initiated by their respective company users.

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Monitor License Usage for CommCell Groups

You can view license usage for an entire CommCell group using the License Summary Worldwide report and the Subclient Peak Usage report. You can view these reports either on the Cloud Services Portal or on the Web Console for the Private Metrics Reporting Server. The reports include information about the licenses associated with each CommCell environment in the group.

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Complete: Manage New Workloads

Back Up and Restore Azure DevOps Services

In addition to Azure DevOps repositories, you can back up and restore Pipelines, Boards, Test Plans, and Artifacts.

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Back Up and Restore MongoDB Atlas Clusters

You can back up and restore MongoDB Atlas clusters in Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. The Commvault software integrates with the MongoDB Atlas native snapshot engine to perform full snap backups and in-place, out-of-place, and point-in-time restores.

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Backup and Restore Apache Kudu Tables

You can back up and restore Apahce Kudu tables from all nodes in the Hadoop cluster, including tables created from the Impala shell.

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Couchbase

You can back up and restore Couchbase clusters and buckets.

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Incremental Backup for Splunk

You can use the Commvault software to incrementally back up Splunk in enterprise clustered environments.

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Complete: Protect Virtual Environments

ACL-Based Browse and Restores on Virtual Server Agent Clients Using Command Line (cvc) Interface

End-users can perform ACL (access control list) based file and folder level browse and restore operations from the backed-up Virtual Server Agent (VSA) clients, using the end-user command line (cvc) interface.

Applicable Agents

Virtual Server Agent (VSA)

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Convert an Oracle VM Virtual Machine to a Red Hat Virtualization Virtual Machine

When restoring an Oracle VM virtual machine from backup, you can restore it as a Red Hat Virtualization virtual machine.

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Convert and Replicate VMs with Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Boot to AWS

You can convert and replicate virtual machines that use Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot, without the need to maintain a UEFI-enabled Amazon Machine Image (AMI) in the destination AWS account. UEFI is a modern firmware that supports large storage volumes and secures boot functionality.

Key Features

  • Migrate VMs with UEFI boot to Amazon EC2 Intel and AMD-based instances on the AWS Nitro system
  • Replicate VMs with UEFI boot to Amazon EC2 instances for disaster recovery
  • Migrate and replicate VMware, Hyper-V, and Azure VMs with UEFI boot to Amazon EC2 instances

Applicable Agents

Virtual Server Agent for Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Applicable Arrays

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Setup Requirements

Before converting or replicating a UEFI-enabled VM, you must update the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy that is used to create the Amazon EC2 instance in the destination account. See the Amazon Web Services Permissions page for the latest amazon_restricted_role_permissions.json file.

More Information

Create an Application-Consistent Backup of Azure Virtual Machines

To create a file system and application consistent backup for Azure VMs, edit your VM group.

Commvault uses Azure restore point mechanisms to create file system and application-consistent backups of Azure VMs. A restore point is a point-in-time, application-aware snapshot of all managed disks that are attached to a VM.

By default, crash consistent backups are enabled when you create a VM group.

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Perform Multi-streamed Restores for VSA Guest Files/Folders Across All Hypervisors

Virtual Server guest files/folders restores now use multiple streams (up to 10 streams) for all hypervisor types that have Indexing V2 clients, providing greater restore performance.

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Preserve Proximity Placement Groups During Full Azure VM Restores

Proximity placement groups that are assigned to backed-up VMs are preserved during full Azure VM restores. A proximity placement group is a group of virtualization resources that are physically located near each other and can be used to reduce latency.

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Updating the OS for Linux access node (File Recovery Enabler for Linux or FREL)

You can update the OS for Linux Access Node and MediaAgent (FREL) 2022E for a single client or do bulk updates of many nodes. This can be done using the Command Center or the CommCell Console. These options are only available for Linux Access Nodes that are deployed using the Commvault Platform Release 2023 FREL OVA version.

Applicable Agents

Virtual Server Agent (VSA) for VMware

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VMware Cloud Director 10.3 Backup, Restore, and Plugin Support

You can use VMware Cloud Director Version 10.3 for backups, restores, and plugin configuration. VMware Cloud Director 10.3 is supported in 11.24 and more recent releases.

Applicable Agents

Virtual Server Agent for VMware

More Information

vRealize Automation Plug-In (VRA) 8.5

Commvault's vRealize Automation (VRA) Data Protection Plug-In now supports version 8.5. Using this plug-in, users can perform backups, change subclients, create new subclients, change plans, perform full VM in-place restores, file-level restores, and perform send logs operations too.

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Disaster Recovery

Perform Warm Sync for Azure Stack and GCP

For noncritical VMs, the disaster recovery VM is created only during failover, so storage and resources are not required to create and continuously update the disaster recovery VM.

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Journey to the Cloud

Amazon VPC Protection

Commvault software protects Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) resources as part of an Amazon EC2 snapshot-based and streaming backup. Amazon VPC allows AWS customers to launch AWS resources in a virtual network which includes subnets, network interfaces, routing, gateways, and service endpoints. Commvault protects and restores Amazon VPC resources that are used by protected Amazon EC2 instances.

Key Features

  • Protect Amazon VPC configuration including subnets, security groups, network interfaces, and tags related to protected Amazon EC2 instances.
  • Recover Amazon EC2 instances in-place, complete with Amazon VPC configuration that has been deleted or modified since backup.
  • Recover Amazon VPC configuration in JSON format for forensic inspection and analysis as part of incident resolution.

Applicable Agents

Virtual Server Agent (VSA) for Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Applicable Arrays

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Setup Requirements

Update the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) Policy used to protect your Amazon EC2 instances with the following updated JSON file (amazon_restricted_role_permissions.json) before performing an Amazon EC2 backup and restore including Amazon VPC resources.

More Information

Back Up and Restore Azure Table Storage

You can back up and restore Azure Table storage data from storage accounts across multiple Azure subscriptions and regions.

Applicable Agents

Microsoft Azure

More Information

Back Up and Restore Projects and Project Web App

You can back up and restore a project or a Project Web App (PWA) using SharePoint Online.

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Combined Storage Class Support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage

The Infrequent Access tier and the Combined Storage tier are supported for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage. Infrequent Access is the default storage type because it provides an optimized cost/performance ratio for data management patterns. Combined Storage drives a simplified approach for storing frequently accessed data, such as job indexing into a warm tier, while actual backup data is stored in a cold tier, providing further cost savings.

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Comparing Objects on Active Directory and Azure Active Directory

When you perform restores, you can compare the data in two backups and you can compare any backed up data to the live data in the Active Directory and Azure Active Directory environment.

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Create GCP Snapshots in a Specific, Geographical Region

By default, all GCP snapshots are multi-regional; this provides redundant availability across all regions in a geography.

To enable the creation of a snapshot in a specific region within a geography, edit the VM group that is associated with the snapshot. You can enable this setting for the following operations:

  • IntelliSnap backups
  • Full-VM restores
  • Streaming backups
  • GCP to GCP replications

More Information

Exchange and OneDrive Subscription Usage Calculations Aligned with Microsoft Licenses

Commvault aligned its subscription usage for Exchange and OneDrive with Microsoft licensing:

  • For Exchange, mailboxes that have an Office 365 Exchange license are counted as part of subscription usage. All mailbox types including primary, archive, shared, group, public folder, and team mailboxes are protected.
  • For OneDrive, users that have OneDrive Quota (that is, OneDrive storage is allocated) and an Office 365 OneDrive license are counted as part of subscription usage.

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Export Large Azure SQL Databases Using Microsoft SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (DacFx)

You can export large Azure SQL databases to a local storage (staging path) that is attached to an access node using Microsoft SQL Server Data-Tier Application Framework (DacFx).

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Manage Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Credentials in Credential Manager

To centrally manage and share your OCI hypervisor credentials, add your OCI hypervisor credentials to Credential Manager.

With Credential Manager, you can create a credential entity to store, share, and update account credentials for shared resources in your environment. You can create credential entities for Windows accounts, Linux accounts, storage array accounts, and cloud accounts.

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Set Tags on Restored VMs for AWS, Azure, and VMware

When you perform an out-of-place restore for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and VMware virtual machines, you can specify tags for the restored VMs.

If the source VMs contained tags, you can modify or remove those tags. And you can add new tags.

For in-place restores to the same hypervisor, existing disk tags and VM tags are preserved.

Applicable Agents

Virtual Server Agent

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TLS Versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 for PostgreSQL Cloud Databases

Backing up SSL-encrypted PostgreSQL instances on cloud platforms Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure is supported with TLS (Transport Layer Security) versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2.

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TLS Versions 1.1 and 1.2 for MySQL Cloud Databases

Backing up SSL-encrypted MySQL instances on cloud platforms Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure is supported with TLS (Transport Layer Security)) versions 1.1 and 1.2.

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Modern Infrastructures

Hardware Monitoring Support for HyperScale X Reference Architecture

Hardware monitoring for HyperScale X is now fully available in Reference Architecture. This enhancement provides a quick and easy way to determine the health and status for all nodes and storage pools, regardless of type. Included monitoring covers disks, cache, fan, power supply, and NIC status, which includes the ability to drill down into the performance statistics for each node.

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IntelliSnap Support for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is a fully-managed shared storage built on the NetApp ONTAP file system. You can now use the NetApp IntelliSnap snapshot engine from Commvault to take snapshots and protect your data on Amazon FSx for NetApp file storage. This is similar to what you do to protect data on an on-prem NetApp array.

Applicable Agents

Applicable Arrays

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP using NetApp engine

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Support for Apple Silicon

The Commvault software supports macOS laptops and file servers that run on Apple silicon chips.

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Understand and Activate Data

Compliance Search for OneDrive Online

You can content index files from OneDrive for Business accounts, and then search the content and metadata for eDiscovery requests.

Applicable Agents

OneDrive

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Compliance Search for SharePoint Online

You can content index files from the SharePoint Online sites, and then search the content and metadata for eDiscovery requests.

Applicable Agents

SharePoint Online

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Legacy File System Content Indexed Data Supported by Case Manager in the Command Center

Compliance officers can use Case Manager to collect data using the legacy file system agent, and then search the collected data for electronically store information (ESI).

Setup Requirements

The legacy file system agent data backups must be complete and content indexed.

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Migrating a Case from Compliance Search to the Command Center

You can migrate a case from the Case Manager in Compliance Search to the Case Manager in the Command Center by using the MigrateLegacyCase app.
Only Exchange Mailbox (Classic) Agent data and Exchange mailbox (Journal mailbox) data is migrated.
 

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Use a Single Index Server for OneDrive and Sensitive Data Governance

You can use your OneDrive for Business index server and its data for sensitive data governance operations. You do not need a separate index server.

Applicable Agents

OneDrive

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