A reboot is required for this update, regardless of the version you are upgrading from.

Introduction

SynetoOS 6.1.0 is a major feature release, now available as a Preview release. It introduces multi-node Hyperion datacenters with live migration of running VMs, VM failover, automatic VM start-up, a redesigned virtual hardware experience, device passthrough, a daily protection report and managed Kubernetes clusters (API only). It also brings many improvements to the reliability of the platform, storage management, virtualization and data protection capabilities.
 

New Features

Hyperion Datacenter

Multiple Hyperion nodes can now be grouped into a datacenter and managed from a single interface, with the hypervisors, VMs and consoles of every node in one view. Nodes can be added, removed or promoted to primary directly from the UI. Nodes join using secure certificates and API keys, and lose access as soon as they are removed.

Live Migration of Running Hyperion VMs

Running VMs can now be moved between nodes of a Hyperion datacenter with no downtime. Storage follows the VM through incremental replication, and its protection policy carries over. Migrations can be cancelled, failed migrations clean up after themselves, and new VMs use a CPU model supported by every node, so they can move freely across the datacenter.

VM Failover

If a primary system goes down, its VMs can be started from their replicas on the replication target. Once the situation is resolved, administrators can either keep the failover VM or return to the original. Replication remains incremental throughout and is blocked towards a returning primary, so no data is overwritten.

Virtual Machine Autostart

VMs on VMware and Hyperion can now start in a defined order when the host boots, and shut down gracefully with it. A host-wide default can be set and overridden per VM from the new Auto Power On/Off tab. These settings follow VMs through imports, migrations and renames, and are preserved across upgrades.

Enhanced VM Management

VM creation and editing have been redesigned around a tabbed wizard, with an Advanced mode for less common settings, and a new Hardware tab allows each part of an existing VM to be edited separately. Virtual hardware is now fully configurable, from CPU model and drive controllers to Secure Boot, MAC addresses and the guest OS.

PCI and USB Device Passthrough for Hyperion

Hyperion VMs can now be given direct access to host hardware. PCI devices such as NVIDIA GPUs can be assigned, with the host prepared automatically, and individual USB devices can be connected to running or stopped VMs without rebooting the host.

Daily Protection Report

Each appliance can now email a daily data protection report to selected recipients. The report shows which VMs are protected, the outcome of their protection and replication jobs over the last 24 hours, the remaining storage, and 10-day trends for jobs and data transfers.

Enhanced Networking

Network management has been rebuilt as the foundation for advanced virtual networking. A new interfaces page details physical adapters, network bonding (active-backup and LACP) adds redundancy and performance, and common settings such as MTU and IP configuration can be edited on both adapters and bonds. Unreachable DNS servers are now clearly reported.

Managed Kubernetes Clusters

Managed Kubernetes clusters can now run on a Hyperion datacenter, offering a public-cloud-style self-service experience while data stays on your own infrastructure. Through the API, clusters can be created, scaled, upgraded and deleted. Networking, storage, VM placement, IP addressing and certificate renewal are handled automatically, and capacity is checked before every change.

User Roles

In addition to the Administrator, users can now be assigned one of three limited roles, enforced across the web interface, the API and SSH: Monitor for read-only access, File-Recovery for recovering and downloading files only, and VM Power Management for powering VMs on and off.

Firmware Advisories

Appliances with an active maintenance contract now report their hardware inventory to Syneto Central. When a component requires a firmware update, a banner in the web interface shows the component, the current and recommended firmware versions, and the severity of the advisory.

Virtualization

When copying a VM with Copy to new virtual machine, the destination storage pool can now be selected. The VMs list can be filtered by hypervisor, compute host and folder, and a new column shows state icons for external, migrating and unregistered VMs. The content of a VM disk can now be replaced with an image file (qcow2, vmdk, vhd, vhdx, raw) through the API, for example to deploy golden images.
Paravirtualized disks on Hyperion now use a dedicated virtio device per disk for better performance. VMs converted from VMware to Hyperion receive a sensible default CPU topology (one socket with the corresponding number of cores) when the source has none defined. VMware operations are more resilient during application-consistent protections, which can take longer to complete. The migration dialog has been simplified, with the only available option preselected, and VM creation dialogs load faster thanks to caching of the guest OS configurations supported by each compute host.

Data Protection

The Replication targets page now shows the VMs replicating to each target and the storage they use. Replication between systems now uses API keys instead of passwords, so changing the administrator password of a replication target no longer takes it offline. Replication History now opens the Tasks page filtered on the VM and on replication tasks. On ECHO platforms, the number of concurrent protections can be configured to limit the load on the primary infrastructure.
Blocked replications now create a task, making them visible in the interface instead of being skipped silently. The data protection service starts faster on systems with many recovery points. The "SLA respected" column has been removed from the Protection History, as it no longer reflects how SLA policies work.

Storage Management

When a pool falls below its free space threshold, recovery point data and incoming replications are no longer written to it, keeping space available for production VMs. Importing, exporting or destroying a pool is now reflected immediately across the interface instead of after several minutes. The default number of NFS server threads has been increased, reducing latency for VMs on NFS datastores.

Monitoring and Notifications

Email notifications can now be sent through Microsoft 365 using OAuth2, replacing the deprecated SMTP AUTH. Connectivity to Syneto Central services can be checked directly from the interface, and warning emails are no longer sent when these services are temporarily unreachable.

User Interface

Spanish, Italian and Romanian translations have been improved, and SLA policies with a weekly frequency can now be saved in the Spanish interface. The dashboard shows the number of SynetoOS VMs, and recovery points on hold have their own widget. The local hypervisor is easier to identify in hypervisor selection lists, technical details of software upgrades are hidden by default, text in tables is no longer truncated too early, and calendar dates are easier to read.

Platform Reliability

The underlying operating system has been updated to Rocky Linux 9.8. Resources for internal services now scale with the memory of the appliance, preventing crashes on large systems. Internal certificates are checked and renewed automatically at boot, even without internet access.

Security

Deleting a network bond now requires identity confirmation through Continuous Authentication. Weak TLS ciphers have been disabled on internal services (SWEET32, CVE-2016-2183).

Resolved Issues

Virtualization

• Fixed an issue where VM consoles were not displayed.
• Fixed an issue where new VMs received a CPU model that was too specific, and VMs cloned from them kept it. These VMs could then fail to power on after being edited or moved to another host.
• Fixed an issue where Hyperion VMs could become unresponsive under heavy disk activity (CPU soft lockup).
• Fixed an issue where the Windows installer could not see the installation or VirtIO driver ISOs.
• Fixed an issue where the network adapter model selected in the Create VM wizard was ignored.
• Fixed an issue where some ISO images, including those in a mounted Image Repository, could not be selected for optical drives.
• Fixed an issue where attaching an existing disk to a VM failed with "file not found" even though the file existed.
• Fixed an issue where detached disks were not listed for VMware VMs with no attached disks.
• Fixed an issue where a newly created VM could briefly appear as unregistered, and deleting several VMs at the same time could fail.
• Fixed an issue where VM information from vCenter was not always up to date, and VMware operations could keep failing until the virtualization service was restarted.
• Fixed an issue where a cloned VM appeared as a regular VM, and cloned or restored Hyperion VMs received a new identity.
• Fixed an issue where the CD-ROM drive was missing after converting a VM from VMware to Hyperion.
• Fixed an issue where VM import could fail with the error "Recovery point failing, downloader error".
• Fixed an issue where many failed "Virtual machine configuration file sync" tasks were created at start-up.

Data Protection

• Fixed an issue where replications were throttled or skipped outside the configured bandwidth-limit window.
• Fixed an issue where all protections on a host failed when one virtual volume pointed inside a Syneto volume instead of its root.
• Fixed an issue where a scheduled minutely SLA policy might not run.
• Fixed an issue where recovery points of replicas were not visible, even though they existed on disk.
• Fixed an issue where replication targets did not load when one of them was unreachable, and editing an SLA policy did not show its replication rules while targets were offline.
• Fixed an issue where a replication target could not be added or reconnected, failing with an authentication error, for example after the remote system was reinstalled.
• Fixed an issue where replication could fail with confusing error messages.
• Fixed an issue where the Protect tab could not be displayed while a replication was running.
• Fixed an issue where a VM's protection policy was still shown for several minutes after protection was removed.
• Fixed an issue where the number of recovery points on hold was incorrect.
• Fixed an issue where downloading recovered files did not work when MFA and Continuous Authentication were enabled.

Storage Management

• Fixed an issue where pool integrity checks could not be scheduled.
• Fixed an issue where information in the pools list did not always match the detailed pool view.
• Fixed an issue where the license violation dialog rounded storage values, hiding the violation (for example, both used and licensed storage showed 2.0 TB).

Networking

• Fixed an issue where a static IP address reverted to DHCP after a reboot.
• Fixed an issue where user-defined network configuration, including vSwitches and bonds, could be reset at boot.
• Fixed an issue where VMs started automatically at boot could lose network connectivity until they were reconnected manually.
• Fixed an issue where creating a bonded vSwitch failed and the primary network adapter could not be selected.
• Fixed an issue where the About page showed no useful information about network adapters.

Monitoring and Notifications

• Fixed an issue where notification emails were sent even when the contact point was disabled, or several were received at once.
• Fixed an issue where contact points, alerts or report settings could go missing after an update, and notification settings did not always reflect the current configuration.

User Interface

• Fixed an issue where the Tasks page showed at most 100 tasks, regardless of the selected page size.
• Fixed an issue where notifications that could not be closed blocked the elements underneath them.
• Fixed an issue where the timezone could not be selected during the quick setup.

Platform Reliability

• Fixed an issue where a software upgrade could fail at its last step.
• Fixed an issue where the connection to Syneto Central did not recover automatically after a network outage.
• Fixed an issue where maintenance was reported as expired one day early.

Security

• Strengthened authorization checks for API keys, which can now be managed only by administrators.

Ongoing Improvements and Future Releases

This SynetoOS 6 update continues the series of ongoing improvements and new features from Syneto. Your feedback is extremely valuable in supporting our commitment to delivering a high-quality operating system. We invite you to explore the new release, discover what's new, and share your feedback and insights to help shape upcoming SynetoOS features and deliver maximum value.