Release Notes

Issues fixed:

• Minor issues fixed to improve the stability and security of the product.

Issues fixed:

• Minor issues fixed to improve the stability of the product.

Fixes:

• This release includes fixes for the unauthenticated change to integration system configuration vulnerability (CVE-2020-24786) reported by Florian Hauser.

New features:

• Backup storage in Azure: Store your Office 365 and Exchange backups in Azure Blob Storage and Azure file shares.
• Custom technician roles: Curate your own technician roles and provide varying levels of administrative privileges to end users based on your needs.

Enhancements:

• Database backup: You can now backup Elasticsearch nodes configured in the product.
• Office 365 licensing enhancement: Mailbox and sites licenses will be freed if no new backups are taken for 31 consecutive days. The mailboxes and sites will automatically be licensed if a backup is taken.

New features:

• Download sites data: You can now bulk download all data from your SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business sites backups and store them securely within your premises.
• Group mailbox backup: You can now backup and restore group mailboxes in your Exchange Online.

Enhancements:

• Option to subscribe to just the PST export of Exchange (Online and on-premises) mailbox feature of the solution.
• You can now search for particular SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business sites using their URL or name in the tree view of SharePoint Online sites popup.
• You can now use LDAPS to secure all communications between RecoveryManager Plus and Active Directory.
• You can now delete the AD domains you have configured in RecoveryManager Plus. Previously, they could only be disabled.

Enhancements:

• Improved notification mails: You can now configure RecoveryManager Plus to send out notification mails with a PDF attachment that provides additional information on the status of all steps undertaken during any backup or restore operation performed in your Exchange organization/tenant, and SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business sites.
• Resume PST export: You can now resume any PST export job that has paused or has encountered an issue instead of having to restart the job from the beginning.

Issues fixed:

• Minor issues fixed to improve the stability of the product.

New features:

Office 365

SharePoint Online backup and restoration: Backup and restore all SharePoint Online site collections, sites, lists and document libraries. When performing a restoration, you have the flexibility to perform:

• Complete site restoration: Restore entire SharePoint Online sites to the backed up state.
• Item-level restoration: Restore individual list items or a single document.
• Restore to a different SharePoint Online site: Restore backed up list items to the same site or to a different site.

OneDrive for Business backup and restoration: Backup and restore all files and folders in your OneDrive for Business environment. When performing a restoration, you have the flexibility to perform:

• Complete site restoration: Restore entire OneDrive for Business site to the backed up state.
• Item-level restoration: Restore individual items such as a single file or folder.
• Restore to a different OneDrive for Business site: Restore backed up files and folders to the same OneDrive for Business site or to a different site.

Active Directory

Schema partition backup and restoration: Backup and restore changes made to classes and attributes in the schema partition.

Enhancements:

• Multiple language support: RecoveryManager Plus is available in  English, Dutch, Italian, French, Japanese, German, Chinese, Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew.
• Updated mailbox restoration view: The updated view allows you to see all items backed up for any mailbox, no matter which cycle the items were backed up in. This will enable users to view all backed up items of a mailbox in one view, in a single click, for enhanced user experience.
• Personalization: You can now customize settings such as the time zone and the date and time format.

Issue fixed:

• The time at which AD backups were taken was displayed in a different time zone instead of the local time zone.

New features:

Export mailbox data to PST: You can now export and archive the data in your mailbox (Exchange Online and on-premises Exchange) to PST format. While exporting the data from mailboxes, you have the flexibility to select:

• all contents in the mailboxes.
• only specific mailbox folders.
• only specific mailbox items that satisfy particular criteria.

Encryption: You can now secure AD and Exchange mailbox backups stored in Elasticsearch with TLS encryption at REST and transport layer.

Issues fixed:

• Minor issues in group membership backup and recovery.

New features:

• Supports multiple Elasticsearch repositories: You can now configure multiple Elasticsearch repositories to store your Active Directory and Exchange (on-premises and Exchange Online) backups.
• Technician audit: You can now audit all changes made to technicians’ privileges and the operations carried out by each technicians.
• Group Policy Preferences backup: You can now backup and restore Group Policy Preferences.

New feature:

On-premises Exchange backup and restoration: All Exchange items such as emails, contacts, notes, calendar entries, journals, posts, and tasks can be backed up and restored. When performing a restoration, you have the flexibility to perform:

• Complete mailbox restoration: Restore entire mailboxes to the backed up state.
• Item-level restoration: Recover individual items such as a single email or a calendar event.
• Restoration to different mailboxes: Restore backed up mailbox items to the same mailbox, to a different mailbox, to a mailbox in a different organization or even to a mailbox in your Exchange Online tenant.

Enhancements:

• Enhanced UI to easily select objects and attributes that are to be backed up.
• Extended schema attributes backup: All extended schema attributes will be automatically detected and selected to be backed up, eliminating the need to manually add them.

New feature:

• Periodic full backups: You can now configure a periodic full backup scheduler for your AD environment.

Enhancements:

• Assign technician roles to AD groups: You can now assign technician privileges to all members of any AD group in a single click.
• Performance enhancement for faster AD backups.

New feature:

Exchange Online backup and restoration: Back up and restore all  Exchange Online items such as emails, contacts, notes, calendar entries, journals, posts, and tasks. Besides restoring entire mailboxes to the backed up state, the following additional restoration capabilities are included with the product:

• Item-level restoration: Restore entire mailboxes to a backed-up state or recover individual items such as a single email or a calendar event.
• Restore to different mailboxes: Restore backed up mailbox items to the same mailbox, to a different mailbox, or even to a mailbox in a different tenant.

Enhancements:

Product update:  The virtual machine and Windows Server backup modules will only be available to customers who have already purchased licenses for those modules. Existing customers can continue to use and receive technical support for those modules until their license expires after which the license cannot be renewed.

GDPR compliance update:

In accordance with the GDPR compliance mandate, the following changes have been made to the product:

• Passwords stored in the database are encrypted using bcrypt algorithm.
• Database access is restricted with a password.
• Sensitive information such as email server and email addresses in connection settings are masked in the product UI.

Active Directory:

• You can now import multiple custom attributes that you need to back up using a CSV file.
• The number of custom attributes that you can back up has been increased from 31 to 2,000.

Bug Fixes:

• A stored Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability (CVE-2018-9163) in Zoho ManageEngine Recovery Manager Plus 5.3 (Build 5330) and earlier allows remote authenticated users (with Add New Technician permissions) to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via the loginName field to technicianAction.do has been fixed.

New features:

Virtual Environment:

• The ability to Instantly Recover VMware virtual machines. You can now start the virtual machine directly from the compressed and encrypted backup image without having to restore the data to the ESXi's datastore.
• The ability to perform periodic health check for Hyper-V backups to assess the integrity of the latest full backup and their corresponding incremental backup files.

Enhancements:

Windows server:

• When backing up a Windows Server, RecoveryManager Plus will now backup only the used space on a drive.

Virtual Environment:

• You can now migrate a virtual machine hosted in Hyper-V server 2012 or 2012 R2 to a hyper-V 2016 server. 

Bug Fixes:

• Issues in backing up AD GPO has been fixed.
• Issues in synthetic full backup of VMware VMs has been fixed.

New features:

Virtual Environment:

• File/folder-level restoration capability for Hyper-V virtual machines.

Enhancements:

Windows server:

• Perform bare metal backup and restoration of Windows servers with GPT partition.
• Encryption: Secure your Windows server backups with AES 128-bit encryption.

Active Directory:

• Attribute filter for restoration: Filter AD objects by the attribute that you wish to restore.

Virtual Environment:

• Live VM migration with state synchronization allows you to clone the current state of the source VM (all running applications) to the target VM to facilitate seamless, downtime-free migration. 

Bug Fixes:

• Registry update failed Issue fixed.
• other minor bug fixes.

New features:

Windows server:

• Windows file server backup & restoration: Backup and restore Windows file servers.
• Bare metal restoration: Restore your Windows servers from scratch.
• File/folder/volume restorations: Perform file, folder, and volume level restorations of your Windows servers (file servers and DCs).

Virtual environment:

• File/folder level restorations: Perform file and folder level restorations in your VMware virtual machines. 

Enhancements:

Active Directory:

• Backup and restore custom GPOs: Back up and restore custom-made GPOs in your AD environment.
• Recycling objects to specific OUs: Restore a deleted object to a new location instead of recycling it to its previous location.

Virtual environment:

• Live VM migration: Migrate a live virtual machine (VMware and Hyper-V) from one host to another.
• Synthetic full backup: Take synthetic full backups of your VMware virtual machines.
• Resource pool selection: When performing full restoration of your virtual machines, you can now choose the resource pool for your restored virtual machine.
• Support for Hyper-V 2016: RecoveryManager Plus now supports backup and restoration of Hyper-V 2016 virtual machines.

General:

Product notifications: RecoveryManager Plus's notifications has now been enhanced to notify for:

• NT service installation: When the product is not installed as a service.
• Unconfigured mail server: When the mail server is not configured.
• Low disk space: When the available space is less than 2GB in the location where RecoveryManager Plus is installed.
• Failed GPO backup: When backing up GPOs has encountered a failure.

Enhancements:

Active Directory:

• Multiple DC support: Add multiple DCs of the same domain to RecoveryManager Plus and set a communication priority in RecoveryManager Plus to specify the DCs which it must communicate when the primary DC is offline.

Bare metal:

• Backup all hard disks in DCs: In addition to backing up the primary hard disk in your DCs, you can now backup all hard disks.
• Enhanced BMR restore wizard: Performing bare metal restoration is now simpler with the improved browse functionality.

Hyper-V

• Backup progress bar: Improved visual representation of backup job's progress when Hyper-V backups are being performed.

General

• Mail notification: You can now pick the components (AD, BMR, VMware or Hyper-V) for which you wish to be notified about the status of backup and restoration activities. You can also choose to receive a periodic summary of all backup and restoration activities carried out at fixed interval instead of receiving a notification after every backup and restoration operation .
• Product Database Backup: You can now schedule backups of the product database (PostgreSQL and MS SQL).

Enhancements:

Active Directory:

• Backup and restoration of Dynamic Distribution Groups. 

Bare metal

• Incremental backup compression: In addition to compressing full backups, incremental backups are now compressed to one-fourth of their original size.

Virtual Environment:

VMware virtual machines

• Direct data transfer to repository: Backup data of your VMware virtual machines are directly sent to the repository instead of through the RecoveryManager Plus server, making the process of backing up your virtual machines faster.
• Datastore selection during restoration: When performing a full restoration to another host, you can now select the datastore in which the virtual machine will be created.

Hyper-V virtual machines

• Destination selection during restoration: You can now select a restoration destination for your Hyper-V virtual machines.  

Enhancements:

New user interface: RecoveryManager Plus has a revamped user interface that makes it easier to navigate and work with for an enhanced user experience.

New Feature:

• Hyper-V backup and restoration: RecoveryManager Plus now allows you to backup and restore Hyper-V virtual machines in addition to VMware virtual machines.
• Easy revert of VMware virtual machines: Undo all changes made to virtual machines after the last backup and instantly revert them to their last backup point in a single click.

Enhancements:

• Support for VCenter/Vsphere Version 6.5: RecoveryManager Plus now supports backup and restoration of virtual machines in vCenter and ESXi server version 6.5.
• Backup progress bar: Improved visual representation when backup jobs are running that illustrates the percentage of job completed

New Feature:

Active Directory backup and recovery:

• Support for Windows server 2016: RecoveryManager Plus now supports backup and recovery of Windows server 2016.
• BMR restore wizard: Performing bare metal restoration is now simpler with the GUI enabled BMR restore wizard.

VMware backup and restoration:

• Quick backup and restoration: Initiate a backup or restoration process on your VMware virtual machines directly from the configuration tab.
• Backup encryption: Secure your backups with AES 128-bit encryption.

New Feature:

VMware virtual machine backup and restoration : RecoveryManager Plus now adds the ability to back up and restore VMWare virtual machines to its arsenal.

Enhancements:

• Recycling OUs will now recycle all nested child objects contained within them.
• You can now recycle objects that have exceeded their tombstone lifetime period.

Issues Fixed:

• Issue in backing up and restoring linked attributes of AD objects has been fixed.

Enhancements:

• RecoveryManager Plus adds the ability to backup and restore the links between GPOs and AD site objects.
• You can now view all objects that each GPO is linked to and restore all links in a single click.

Issues fixed:

• Issue in backing up certain pre-defined group policies has been fixed and all policies in all Windows servers (2003, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 and 2012R2) can now be backed up.

Issues Fixed:

• Memory leak issue present in the bare-metal recovery agent has been fixed.

New Feature:

• Bare-metal backup & recovery:RecoveryManager Plus now allows you to back up your domain controllers completely, including the system state, data in system partitions, and AD database. In case of any catastrophes, the solution allows you to restore from the available backups instantly.

New Feature:

• Custom attributes backup & recovery: In addition to default AD attributes, administrators can now backup and restore attributes from extended schemas.

Enhancement:

• Tracking disabled user objects: Administrators can now choose to either track or not track the disabled user objects for better license management.

Issues fixed:

• Issue with backup & recovery of GPOs has been fixed.
• Issue in calculating the number of objects tracked when a domain controller is changed has been fixed.

New Features:

• Role Delegations: Administrators can now delegate roles viz., Admin, Operator or Auditor to other users using the Technician section.
• Virtual IP binding: You can now bind RecoveryManager Plus server to a specific IP address.

Issues fixed:

• Issue with backup and recovery of group membership information has been fixed.

New Features:

• With the new backup retention policy administrators can specify the number of days for which the incremental backups are to be maintained.
• Administrators can now backup and restore all the attributes of the Dial-in tab of AD users and computers as well.
• Administrators can now choose specific attributes that are to be restored while recycling deleted objects.

Enhancements:

• You now have the option to choose the status of backup operations (both success and failure, or only failure) for which you wish to receive email notifications. Further, you also get an option to turn off the notifications completely.
• Send email notifications on the status of backup operations to multiple users.

Enhancements:

Optimized memory handling for better performance.

Issues fixed:

• Issue encountered while selecting OUs in backup settings has been fixed.
• Issue encountered in tracking object count during initial backup has been fixed.

New feature:

Support for multiple databases: RecoveryManager Plus now supports MS SQL database in addition to pgSQL, and lets administrators migrate data from existing pgSQL database to new MS SQL database.

Enhancement:

Additional filter in Recycle Bin: Now you can filter deleted objects in the Recycle Bin by date.

Enhancements:

Enriched Backup Settings: Option to check for new OUs and add them to backup cycle.

Domain Discovery: Option to refresh the initial object count when a new domain is being added.

Issues Fixed:

• Product crash during domain discovery.
• Issues in displaying objects in an OU that has been newly added for backup.

New Feature:

Enhanced Security: With this release, RecoveryManager Plus allows you to enable SSL which secures data transfer between web client and the application server.

Session Expiry: Administrators can now configure session expiration duration for the product.

Enhancements:

• Steps for installing the product as a Windows Service are now displayed prominently within the product.
• The error messages displayed when any recovery operation fails has been improved to identify the cause of failure.

Issues fixed:

Backup Settings: Issues faced while saving the configured backup settings have been fixed.

Enhancements:

Initial backup optimization: The performance of initial backup for a domain has been improved by reducing the time taken to complete the backup process.

Issues fixed:

• GPO backup and restoration issues rectified.

Issues fixed:

• Issues in domain discovery have been fixed.
• Issues in providing support for special characters and non-English characters in passwords have been fixed.
• The backup database's schema has been improved.

Major Update:

Framework Shift: RecoveryManager Plus has completely revamped its architecture - shifts to Java from .NET framework, to become a leaner and faster AD backup and recovery tool.

New Feature:

Mail Notification on Backup Status: RecoveryManager Plus gains the ability to send email notifications to administrators on the status of backup operations.

Enhancements:

Simplified Initial Backup: The process of initial backup after installing the product has been simplified; administrators can now add domains directly from the dashboard and even handpick the OUs that need to be backed up.

Additional Recycle Bin Filters: More filters have been added to the 'Recycle Bin' for giving administrators the flexibility to limit the scope of 'deleted object search' to specific OUs and object types.

New Features:

Backup Explorer: With this update, explore all backups made until the present moment which are displayed as a timeline and view the list of objects backed up during each backup process. Also, for each backup version of an object, in addition to the backup value and the current value, view the previous backup value too.

The Backup Explorer also allows you to revert changes from the same window instantaneously. Revert all changes made during a backup operation or select the objects' whose changes have to be reverted based on your requirement.

New Features:

GPO Backup and Recovery: With this update, RecoveryManager Plus now allows you to restore Group Policy Objects (GPOs) in your Active Directory. Track each change made to your GPOs and granularly restore modified policies within a GPO.

OU/Containers Backup and Recovery: We have now extended RecoveryManager Plus' ability to include backup and restore entire OUs and containers. With this update, backup and restore all AD objects within an OU/Container in a single click and track changes made to them. While restoring entire OUs/Containers, restore delegation permissions previously assigned to them along with all the other AD objects.

New Features:

DNS object backup and recovery: RecoveryManager Plus now allows you to backup DNS zones and DNS nodes in addition to Users, Computers, Contacts and Groups. Using this feature, you can easily track your domain's DNS configuration changes and back it up for easy restoration in case of any disaster.

Exchange attributes backup and recovery: We have now extended User,Contact and Group objects' backup to include exchange attributes as well. With this update, RecoveryManager Plus now allows you to track and query changes made to Mailbox Users, Distribution Groups, Mail Users and Mail Contacts. You can also perform scheduled and incremental backups of exchange related attributes, also restore or rollback these changes, either partially or completely.

New Features:

Recycle bin: This feature allows you to view the list of deleted objects and restore those objects.When a deleted object is restored, its group membership is also restored along with other attributes. Attributes like the last set password of users and computers are also restored. This feature is available in the free version too.

New Features:

Multi domain support: RecoveryManager Plus now allows you to backup & restore all AD objects across multiple domains from a single window. It gives you a holistic view of all objects present in different domains and enables you to manage them efficiently.

Password Recovery: With this new feature, recover the last set password of the user account along with all the other AD attributes of the user during restoration or rollback, thereby enabling the users to resume work without any hitch. Also, when a modified computer account is recovered or restored, this feature enables you to automatically link it to the domain with the password last set on the computer.

Note: This option is configurable.

Force Replication on backup & recovery: This feature force replicates the data in all Domain Controllers when any backup operation is initialized. This ensures that modifications made to the objects in all Domain Controllers before the replication cycle are reflected in the Backup giving you the actual state of the objects during backups.

When Recovery operations are performed, RecoveryManager Plus will push the updated information to all Domain Controllers in the domain by forcing the replication. This feature makes sure that all Domain Controllers contain the updated information as soon as any recovery operation is performed irrespective of the replication cycle time.

Note:

• This option is configurable for both Backup & Recovery
• For this functionality to work, the machine where the RMP product is installed should be joined in any AD domain.

Rollback enhancements: With this update of RecoveryManager Plus, enjoy the revamped user interface of Rollback feature.

The new User Interface allows you to trigger multiple rollback operations simultaneously and keep track of the progress of all rollbacks in the same window.

Moreover, a new backup will be taken before performing the rollback operation. This ensures that the current state of AD objects will be backed up before doing the recovery operation.

Backup enhancements: With this feature, when a particular object is modified frequently, RecoveryManager Plus creates a full backup for that particular object. This ensures faster rollback in case of any data modifications on that object.

Even more, you can track all the backup progress right from your dashboard! A single view of your dashboard provides you with all the vital statistics of your backup environment.

Forgot password option: This new update allows users to reset the password of RecoveryManager Plus if they have forgotten their passwords. The process requires you to run a .exe file which will reset the password of the administrator to its default password.

BackLink properties handling: With this update, any change done to attributes that have backlinks, like User Group Membership, are captured in both the User and Group object. In simpler terms, it is stored in both the forward link object (User) and the backward link object (Group). This functionality provides clear tracking of object history. This allows the administrators to restore modified user accounts along with their group memberships and vice-versa.

Free version update: Previous editions of RecoveryManager Plus limited the backup of AD objects to 50 users. The updated version provides you with unrestricted backup and restore for any number of deleted AD objects.

New Features:

AD groups, computers and contacts backup: RecoveryManager Plus now allows you to backup AD groups, computers and contacts as well. In addition to AD users, you can now perform scheduled and incremental backups of AD groups, computers and contacts, and store them as different versions, along with their new and old values.

Recovery of AD Groups, Computers and Contacts: Using the recovery feature, you can now restore/rollback AD groups, computers and contacts too, to an earlier state/version. This feature makes it possible to recover AD groups, computers and contacts also, either completely or partially (only the required attributes), as per your need.

Object-based filter in backed-up objects search: While restoring/rolling back AD objects, this new filter makes it easy to locate the desired backed-up objects. Using this filter, you can restrict the scope of the search to only the specific types of AD objects that you need.

BitLocker Keys Recovery: You no longer have to worry about losing data from BitLocker-protected drives, as this feature enables you to backup the BitLocker recovery keys stored in AD, along with all the changes made to them. Whenever needed, you can always revert to an earlier version of the key and use it to recover the data from the encrypted drives.

New Features:

RecoveryManager Plus ‘on-premises’ Edition: This release unveils the on-premises avatar of RecoveryManager Plus, the cloud-based AD backup and recovery tool. Now, you can backup your AD user objects and store the backed-up data on your very own servers, inside your own walls.

Just like the cloud-based version, the on-premises version also allows you to:

• Perform scheduled, incremental & granular backups of Active Directory objects
• Perform granular search and comparison of backed up data
• Rollback objects/specific attributes of objects to any specific point in time
• Put in place a tight change/version control system to keep track of all changes to AD objects
• Manage change with change control activities (undelete, undo move, etc.) for AD objects