Version 9.8.0

Released September 26, 2023

Important!!

Read This Document Before Attempting To Install Or Use This Product!
This document contains last minute information that must be considered before, during and after installation.

Introduction

This release notes document is written for the person who installs, configures and/or administers the LifeKeeper Single Server Protection for Linux product. The document contains important information not detailed in the formal LifeKeeper Single Server Protection documentation set such as system requirements, new features and links to product restrictions and troubleshooting hints and tips. It is important that you review this document before installing and configuring LifeKeeper Single Server Protection software.

Quick Links

What’s New in this Release?
Bug Fixes
Discontinued Features
Components
Optional Software
System Requirements
Upgrades
Software Requirements
Open Source Packages
Known Issues

LifeKeeper Single Server Protection Product Description

LifeKeeper Single Server Protection allows for application monitoring in a single node configuration (i.e., no cluster requirements or restraints). Single node environments may be physical or virtual (vSphere, KVM, Amazon EC2). LifeKeeper Single Server Protection is built on the proven and stable architecture of SIOS LifeKeeper. LifeKeeper Single Server Protection provides superior application monitoring and can perform recovery of failed applications and system infrastructure items (e.g., NFS share, IP address, File System). If an application cannot be recovered for some reason, LifeKeeper Single Server Protection will initiate a restart of the node via a system reboot or via a VMware HA restart for VMware virtual machines configured for VM and Application Monitoring.

New Features of Supported Versions of LifeKeeper Single Server Protection for Linux Version 9

Product
Feature
New in Version 9.8.0
MySQL Recovery Kit Supports MariaDB v10.6, v10.11 (Certified in January 2024).
PostgreSQL Recovery Kit Supports PostgreSQL 16 (Certified in Jan. 2024).
Supports EDB Postgres Advanced Server v15 and v16 (Certified in Jan. 2024).
Supports FUJITSU Software Enterprise Postgres 15 (Certified in November 2023)
LifeKeeper Core SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP5 is supported. (Certified in February 2024.)
Miracle Linux 9.2 is supported. (Certified in January 2024.)
Oracle Linux 8.8 is supported. (Certified in November 2023.) Note: If you are using DataKeeper, follow these steps when installing LifeKeeper.
Rocky Linux 8.8 is supported. (Certified in November 2023.) Note:If you are using DataKeeper, follow these steps when installing LifeKeeper.
Miracle Linux 8.8 is supported. (Certified in November 2023.) Note: If you are using DataKeeper, follow these steps when installing LifeKeeper.
Oracle Linux 9.2 is supported. (Certified in October 2023.)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 is supported. (Certified in October 2023.) Note: If you are using DataKeeper, follow these steps when installing LifeKeeper.
Rocky Linux 9.1 is supported.(Certified in October 2023.)
  • Rocky Linux is not supported in the Cloud. (i.e. AWS/Azure/GCP/OCI) .
  • Rocky Linux v9.0 is only supported in LifeKeeper for Linux v9.7.0.
  • SAP Recovery Kit and SAP HANA Recovery Kit are not supported.
Rocky Linux 9.2 is supported. (Certified in October 2023.)
  • Rocky Linux does not support GCP and OCI.
  • Rocky Linux v9.0 is only supported in LifeKeeper for Linux v9.7.0.
  • SAP Recovery Kit and SAP HANA Recovery Kit are not supported.
QWK storage now supports specifying endpoints.
MQ LifeKeeper for Linux now supports IBM MQ 9.3.2, 9.3.3 and 9.3.4 (Certified in November 2023.)
Bug Fixes
New in Version 9.7.0
LifeKeeper Core Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.0 is supported.
Enhanced firewall detection during setup runtime.
Rocky Linux 9.0 is supported.
  • Rocky Linux is not supported in the Cloud. (i.e. AWS/Azure/GCP/OCI) .
  • Rocky Linux v9.0 is only supported in LifeKeeper for Linux v9.7.0.
Miracle Linux v8.6 is supported.
VMware vSphere 8.0 is supported. (Certified in June 2023.)
Oracle Linux 8.7 is supported. (Certified in June 2023.)
Oracle Linux 9.0 and 9.1 are supported. (Certified in June 2023.)
Supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.7 (Certified in May 2023.)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.1 is supported. (Certified in May 2023.)
Rocky Linux 8.7 is supported. (Certified in June 2023.)
Miracle Linux 9 is supported. (Certified in June 2023.)
PostgreSQL Recivery Kit Supports PostgreSQL 15.
NFS LifeKeeper does not support NFS loop back configurations where a server exports a file system and mounts the exported file system on the same system. An error message is logged if the unsupported configuration is detected during install/update or creation of an NFS resource.
Bug Fixes
New in Version 9.6.2
LifeKeeper Core Added support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6.
Added support for Oracle Linux 8.6.
Miracle Linux 8.4 is now supported.
Bug Fixes
New in Version 9.6.1
LifeKeeper Core Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 is supported.
Oracle Linux 8.5 is supported.
Bug Fixes
Recovery Kit for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Communication via virtual IP address using the LifeKeeper IP Recovery Kit is allowed in the Oracle Cloud environment.
Network Attached Storage Recovery Kit It is no longer necessary to set “NFS_RPC_PROTOCOL=tcp” when protecting an NFS shared file system with UDP disabled
LifeKeeper GUI Bug Fixes
New in Version 9.6.0
LifeKeeper Core Support SLES 15 SP3
Supports Oracle Linux 8.4
Oracle Supports Oracle 21c (21.3) running on-premises
PostgreSQL Recovery Kit Supports PostgreSQL 14
Supports EDB Postgres Advanced Server 14.0 (Certified in January 2022)
Bug Fixes
New in Version 9.5.2
LifeKeeper Core
Supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4
Supports CentOS 8.3
Supports Oracle Linux 8.3
Supports Oracle Linux 7 UEK 6
Note: The kernel should be updated to 5.4.17-2102.202.5 or higher.
Supports Oracle Linux 8 UEK 6
Note: The kernel should be updated to 5.4.17-2102.202.5 or higher.
LKCLI has been enhanced to control the following Recovery Kits.
  • SAP MaxDB
  • MQ RK
You can now run lkcli from non-root users who belong to the lk group.
You can now use the “-i” option with lkcli stop as well as with lkstop.
Bug Fixes
MySQL Supports MariaDB 10.5
Bug Fixes
MQ Supports WebSphere MQ 9.2 for RHEL 7.9
Supports WebSphere MQ 9.2 for RHEL 8.3
Install, NFS, IP, Oracle, Quorum/Witness, Filesystem, Generic, lksupport Bug Fixes
New in Version 9.5.1
LifeKeeper Core Supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.9 (Certified in December 2020)
Supports CentOS 7.9 (Certified in December 2020)
Supports Oracle Linux 7.9 (Certified in December 2020)
lkstop -i command stops LifeKeeper core but does not stop the protected resources. The user is prompted to confirm (yes/no) that they want to continue.
LKCLI has been enhanced to control the following Recovery Kits.
  • DB2 RDBMS
  • RAW
  • Postfix
  • VMDK as Shared Storage
  • SAP ASE
  • Samba
  • HULFT / HULFT HUB
  • OraclePDB for Oracle RDBMS
Supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 (Certified in January 2021) Note: If you are using DataKeeper, login here and follow these steps when installing LifeKeeper.
Supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2
Supports CentOS 8.2
Supports Oracle Linux 8.2 (UEK6 is not supported)
Supports OpenSSL package to 1.1.1g
Supports SLES15 SP2
Supports cURL package to 7.68.0
Bug Fixes
MQ LifeKeeper for Linux now supports IBM MQ 9.2 (January 2021)
QSP Apache Tomcat can be protected with the Quick Service Protection (QSP) Recovery Kit
install Implemented a setup script improvement
Bug Fixes
PostgreSQL Supports PostgreSQL 13 (Certified in December 2020)
Supports EDB Postgres Advanced Server 13.0 (Certified in December 2020)
SAP MaxDB, DB2, Filesystem, Generic Application, IP Bug Fixes

Bug Fixes

The following is a list of the latest bug fixes and enhancements.

Bug
Description
PL-8605 Upgrade perl from 5.8.8 to 5.32.1
PL-16529 Upgrade Open source packages powershell and PowerCLI
PL-16874 Updated the included OpenSSL package to 3.1.1

Hotfixes and Add-on Support Packages

The patch is located here.

Hotfix/Add-on Support Package
Bug Description
Patch Description
steeleye-lkHOTFIX-core-PL-20136-9.8.0-7607.x86_64.rpm
  1. PL-20136 – lkpolicy can not set Temporal Recovery policy.
  2. PL-20155 – Monitoring.cgi return “500 Internal Server Error” and html does not display communication path status.
The patch resolves a problem when the lighttpd package was updated the entries in the LifeKeeper default file was not properly being included causing lkpolicy to fail. The Monitoring.cgi change resolves a problem where it was to trying to call a subroutine that no longer exists and was using a deprecated Perl syntax.

Discontinued Features

Feature
Description
Discontinued in Version 9.8.0
Oracle ARK Oracle 12c R1 and R2 are no longer supported.
WebSphere MQ ARK MQ 8.0.x and 9.0.x are no longer supported.
Discontinued in Version 9.7.0
No longer support new or existing configurations with NFS servers/clients on the same nodes (also known as “Loopback configuration”).
Discontinued in Version 9.6.2
None
Discontinued in Version 9.6.1
None
Discontinued in Version 9.6.0
None
Discontinued in Version 9.5.2
Core SteelEye Management Console is no longer supported.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is no longer supported.
CentOS 6 is no longer supported.
Oracle Linux 6 is no longer supported.
Oracle Oracle virtual machine (OVM) latest 3.4.6 is no longer supported.
PostgreSQL PostgreSQL 9.5 is no longer supported.
EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.5 is no longer supported.
VMware VMware 5.5 and 6.0 are no longer supported.
Discontinued in Version 9.5.1
None
Discontinued in Version 9.5.0
LifeKeeper Core System log management using syslog-ng is no longer supported. Please use rsyslog.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11.0 to SP4 is no longer supported.
Oracle Oracle Database Enterprise Edition 11g R2 is no longer supported.
Oracle Database Standard Edition 11g R2 is no longer supported.
Oracle Database Standard Edition One 11g R2 is no longer supported.
MySQL MariaDB 5.5, 10.0 is no longer supported.
PostgreSQL PostgreSQL 9.4 is no longer supported.
EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.4 is no longer supported.
Discontinued in Version 9.4.1
None

Components

LifeKeeper Single Server Protection Software is bundled and runs on 64-bit systems (x86_64, AMD64) and is comprised of the following components:

Package
Package Name
Protected Applications
LifeKeeper Core steeleye-lk-9.8.0-7607.x86_64.rpm The LifeKeeper package provides recovery software for failures associated with core system components such as memory, CPUs, the operating system, the SCSI disk subsystem and file systems.
LifeKeeper GUI steeleye-lkGUI-9.8.0-7607.x86_64.rpm The LifeKeeper GUI package provides a graphical user interface for LifeKeeper administration and status monitoring.
LifeKeeper IP Recovery Kit steeleye-lkIP-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The SSP IP Recovery Kit provides recovery software for automatic switchover of IP addresses.
Quick Service Protection steeleye-lkQSP-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The Quick Service Protection Recovery Kit provides a simple disaster recovery function for various services.
LifeKeeper Man Pages steeleye-lkMAN-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The LifeKeeper Man Page package provides reference manual pages for the SSP product.

LifeKeeper Single Server Protection Optional Software

Package
Package Name
Description
LifeKeeper Apache Web Server Recovery Kit steeleye-lkAPA-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The LifeKeeper for Linux Apache Web Server Recovery Kit provides fault resilience for Apache Web Server software in a LifeKeeper environment.
LifeKeeper SAP MaxDB Recovery Kit steeleye-lkSAPDB-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The SAP MaxDB Recovery Kit provides fault resilient protection for SAP MaxDB databases in a LifeKeeper for Linux environment.
LifeKeeper DB2 Recovery Kit steeleye-lkDB2-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The LifeKeeper for Linux DB2 Recovery Kit provides fault resilient protection for DB2 database instances. LifeKeeper together with the DB2 Universal Database product family afford increased availability to DB2 operating environments by effectively recovering database server failures without significant down-time or human intervention.
LifeKeeper Oracle Recovery Kit steeleye-lkORA-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The LifeKeeper for Linux Oracle Recovery Kit provides fault resilience for Oracle software in a LifeKeeper environment furnishing a mechanism to tie the data integrity of Oracle databases to the increased availability provided by LifeKeeper.
LifeKeeper MySQL Recovery Kit steeleye-lkSQL-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The LifeKeeper for Linux MySQL Recovery Kit provides an easy way to add LifeKeeper fault‑resilient protection for MySQL resources and databases enabling a failure on the primary database server to be recovered on a designated backup server without significant lost time or human intervention.
LifeKeeper PostgreSQL Recovery Kit steeleye-lkPGSQL-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The LifeKeeper for Linux PostgreSQL Recovery Kit is an SQL compliant, object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) based on POSTGRES providing a mechanism for protecting PostgreSQL instances within LifeKeeper.
LifeKeeper Sybase ASE Recovery Kit steeleye-lkSYBASE-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The LifeKeeper for Linux Sybase ASE Recovery Kit provides LifeKeeper resource protection for the Sybase ASE components Adaptive Server, Monitor Server, and Backup Server.
LifeKeeper NFS Server Recovery Kit steeleye-lkNFS-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The LifeKeeper for Linux NFS Server Recovery Kit provides fault resilience for Network File System (NFS) software in a LifeKeeper environment enabling a failure on the primary NFS server to be recovered on a designated backup server without significant lost time or human intervention.
LifeKeeper Network Attached Storage Recovery Kit steeleye-lkNAS-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm

The LifeKeeper for Linux Network Attached Storage Recovery Kit provides fault resilience for Network File System (NFS) software in a LifeKeeper environment affording LifeKeeper users the opportunity to employ an exported NFS file system as the storage basis for LifeKeeper hierarchies.

NFS over UDP is not supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and later.

Some environments may require additional configurations. Refer to Specific Configuration Considerations for details.

LifeKeeper WebSphere MQ Recovery Kit steeleye-lkMQS-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm The LifeKeeper for Linux WebSphere MQ Recovery Kit provides fault resilient protection for WebSphere MQ queue managers and queue manager storage locations enabling a failure on a primary WebSphere MQ server or queue manager to be recovered on the primary server or a designated backup server without significant lost time or human intervention.
Recovery Kit for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure steeleye-lkOCIVIP-9.8.0-7607.noarch.rpm Communication via a virtual IP address using the LifeKeeper IP Recovery Kit is allowed in the Oracle Cloud environment.

System Requirements

LifeKeeper Single Server Protection Product Requirements

LifeKeeper Single Server Protection is supported on any Linux platform that satisfies the minimum requirements included in the table below.

Description Requirement
Linux Operating System See the Linux Configuration Table for specific operating system information.
Virtual Environments The guest operating system running on the virtual machine must be one of the supported versions listed in the Linux Configuration Table. The following virtual environment is an example where LifeKeeper for Linux is deployed. Please refer to the Support Matrix for detailed versions of supported virtualization environments.

  • KVM

  • Oracle VM Server for x86

  • VMware vSphere v6.5, v6.7, v7.0 and v8.0

  • Amazon EC2

  • Microsoft Azure

  • Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor

  • Google Cloud

  • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (See Note3)

    vSAN configuration is supported for vSphere 6.5 or later except RDM which is not supported by VMWare.

    Fiber channel SAN and shared SCSI cluster configurations are not supported with LifeKeeper for Linux running in a KVM and Oracle VM Server for x86 virtual machine.

    Note1: Some Amazon EC2 configurations have issues when the Shutdown Strategy is set to “Do not Switchover Resources”. For detailed information, see Troubleshooting > Known Issues and Restrictions.

    Note2: On SLES v12 or later running on AWS or Azure, the dynamic change of the virtual IP address by the cloud network plug-in may affect the operation of the LifeKeeper cluster. For detailed information, see LifeKeeper Core – Known Issues / Restrictions.

    Note3: Refer to Support Configuration for the supported configuration and the restrictions.
Memory The LifeKeeper for Linux minimum memory requirement is the same as the OS minimum requirement. System memory should be sized for the applications that will be running on the LifeKeeper protected system as well. Refer to Application Configuration for further information.
Memory The minimum memory requirement for a system supporting LifeKeeper is 512 MB. This is the minimum amount required by LifeKeeper supported Linux distributions. System memory should be sized for the applications that will be running on the LifeKeeper protected system as well. Refer to Application Configuration for further information.
Disk Space The LifeKeeper Package Cluster requires the following disk space:

/opt – approx 100MB (depending on kits installed)

/ – approx 110MB

Java Runtime Environment
  • OpenJDK 1.8, 10 or later

Upgrades

SSP for Linux can be upgraded to Version 9.8.0 from either LifeKeeper Version 9.6.x or Version 9.7.0. If upgrading from a version other than 9.6.x or 9.7.0, the older version will need to be uninstalled and SSP for Linux will have to be reinstalled. An alternative to uninstalling the older version would be to upgrade from the older version to 9.6.x or 9.7.0, then perform the upgrade to 9.8.0.

LifeKeeper Single Server Protection Support Software Requirements

The following table of Supporting Software is only required in VMware VMs configured for VM and Application Monitoring.

Product
Requirement(s)
Disk Space Required
VMware

VMware vSphere Client (for LifeKeeper Single Server Protection vSphere Client Plug-in functionality)

VMware Tools installed and running on all protected virtual machines

VMware Application HA monitoring must be enabled and set to VM and Application Monitoring for all protected virtual machines

Approximately 175 KB in /opt (for VMware Tools

Open Source Packages

The following open source packages are included in the LifeKeeper installation image.

Name Version License Type and Version
curl 7.86.0 curl
lighttpd 1.4.68 BSD-3-Clause
openssl 3.0.7 Apache-2.0
pcre 4.5 PCRE
pdksh 5.2.14 Public Domain and GPL
perl (IMPORTANT: Starting in LifeKeeper for Linux v9.8.0 the perl version that is included has been upgraded to Perl 5.32.1 which may require changes to custom perl code. Refer to Perl 5.8.8 to Perl 5.32.1 Upgrade for details.) 5.32.1 GPL-1.0-or-later or Artistic-1.0-Perl
Perl Addon Packages Various
powercli 13.0.0 various license
powershell 7.2.10 MIT
readline 4.3 GPL-2.0-or-later
runit 2.0.0 BSD-3-Clause
util-linux 2.31.1 GPLv2 and GPLv2+ and LGPLv2+ and BSD with advertising and Public Domain
openjdk 12.0.2 GPL-2.0-or-later
kconfig-frontends 4.11.0 GPL-2.0-only
ping BSD-4-Clause
zlib-static 1.2.3 Zlib
Perl Config::IniFiles (CPAN module) 2.27 GPL/Artistic (Same as Perl)
balance 3.54 GPL-2.0-only
nbd-client 1.0 GPL
nbd-server 1.3 GPL
nbd (kernel module) 2.6.32
3.10.0
4.18.0
GPL-2.0-only
raid1 (kernel module) 2.6.32
4.18.0
GPL-2.0-only

Known Issues

See the Known Issues and Workarounds section in LifeKeeper Single Server Protection for Linux Technical Documentation for known issues, workarounds and other troubleshooting information.

Trademarks:
  • “Amazon Web Services, the “Powered by Amazon Web Services” logo, “AWS”, “Amazon EC2”, “EC2”, “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud”, “Amazon Virtual Private Cloud”, and “Amazon VPC” are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries.
  • Google Cloud, BigQuery and Google Compute Engine are trademarks of Google LLC.
  • “Oracle Cloud” is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and its affiliates.
    Trademark symbols such as ® and ™ may be omitted from system names and product names in this document.

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