SRM Updates – 5.1.0.1 and 5.0.2 Released

Along with the vCenter 5.1.0B release, we now also have a few interesting updates in the Site Recovery Manager world that were just released.

First, for those of you not yet ready to upgrade to 5.1, we have an SRM 5.0.2 release with a few minor but important fixes and improvements.

• A handful of new operating systems are now supported for customization (including Windows 8, W2K12, RHEL 6.2/6.3, and Ubuntu 12.04).
• vSphere Replication accepts MD5 certificates
• The OpenSSL implementation has been upgraded to 0.9.8t
• Autogenerated certificates are now 2048 bit
• And the are a raft of resolve issues.

Go check out the full list of features at the Site Recovery Manager 5.0.2 Release Notes page!

For those of you, however, who are running the latest release, SRM 5.1.0.1 was also released.  This one is mostly dealing with resolving two outstanding issues in SRM 5.1.  Those issues that are fixed are:

• Installing SRM 5.1 or upgrading to SRM 5.1 using an imported certificate fails
  If you attempt to install SRM 5.1 or upgrade to SRM 5.1 using an imported PKCS12 certificate rather than an auto-generated certificate, the installer runs to completion but then fails with the error Failed to install certificate. See KB 2036909. This issue has been fixed in SRM 5.1.0.1.
• SRM Server on the recovery site fails during cleanup of recovery plans
  SRM Server on the recovery site fails repeatedly during cleanup if there is nothing to clean up, for example if there are no LUNs to detach, or no datastores to unmount. This problem occurs when the command to start the test recovery from SRM Server to the SRA reports success with at least one LUN, but finds no LUNs when the ESXi hosts on the recovery site run a rescan. This issue has been fixed in SRM 5.1.0.1.

So this too is a pretty small release, but better to get patched and up to date under controlled circumstances, rather than trying to fix problems during an emergency!

Keep in mind as well – if you’re upgrading SRM and using vSphere Replication: You will need to upgrade vSphere Replication at the same time to match the SRM version.  In this case you may actually already be running VR at the latest version, but please make sure you check the revisions of VC, SRM, and VR to make sure they work correctly together!

Check out the SRM 5.1 Release Notes Page for further information about SRM 5.1 in general.

-Ken

*** Postscript ***

Since writing this blog, I’ve been asked a few times about upgrades.  Please note that the 5.0.2 patch is a “later” release than the 5.1 release, and that they are completely separate code branches. This means there is NO direct upgrade path from 5.0.2 to 5.1.0.x.

In essence, if you’re running 5.0.x make sure you upgrade to the latest version of 5.0.x but when it comes time to move to 5.1 you’re going to do a forklift upgrade for all intents and purposes.  5.0 and 5.1 are separate products, and patches are only valid within their own major branch.