StorSimple 5000/7000 Series: Critical Update (Software Version 2.1.1.500) Now Available

  • Article

A new critical update for StorSimple 5000 and 7000 series appliances, version 2.1.1.500 is now available for download.

 

The Key features of this release are:

  1. Support for Migration from 5000/7000 series to 8000 series appliance

Improved feature offerings of the 8000 series appliances include efficient centralized management of multiple appliances through StorSimple Manager service, better class of hardware and updated firmware, virtual appliances, data mobility as well as features in the future roadmap. With this release, you can export an encrypted configuration file from their 5000-7000 series appliance, enabling migration to StorSimple 8000 series appliance. The file can be encrypted by a user-supplied or an automatically generated key.

       2. Support for latest Microsoft Azure Storage API –

The Azure Storage Service API version currently used by StorSimple 8000 series devices will be deprecated on December 10, 2015, as per the announcement on removal of Storage Service versions. v2.1.1.500. contains an upgrade to the latest version of the Storage service APIs . It is critical that you upgrade to v2.1.1.500 prior to December 9, 2015, failing which your StorSimple devices could stop functioning correctly after this date.

       3. Support for Azure ZRS (Zone redundant storage)

StorSimple 5000/7000 series now supports Azure storage accounts created with the ‘Zone Redundant’ replication option. Zone-redundant storage replicates your data across two to three facilities, either within a single region or across two regions, providing higher durability than Locally Redundant Storage (LRS), at a lower cost point per unit of storage than the Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS) offering. More information on Azure Storage Redundancy Options is available as part of MSDN documentation here.

 

Note:

1. v2.1.1.500 is a software only release and there is no Firmware upgrade patch associated with it as previous release. The most up-to-date firmware version continues to be v2.1.1.461. There is a link to this firmware version in the upgrade guide for software version v2.1.1.486. If you are unsure which firmware version is installed on your appliance, running the 2.1.1.461 upgrade is recommended. If the firmware is already the latest version, re-running the upgrade will not cause any harm – the upgrade process will detect that the latest version is already installed and will make no changes.

2. v2.1.1.500 is not compatible with previous versions of Appliance software as it contains a metadata change. For example, if your appliance is on v2.1.1.500 and you do a controller replacement with a controller having an older software version, it would require a mandatory upgrade to v2.1.1.500 as well.