We’re proud to announce the long-term support (LTS) of Cohesity Data Cloud 6.8.1. Immediate benefits include a software version that is production ready, for those critical areas that require greater stability and is available to all customers. This version has met or exceeded high-quality standards, updates, and monitoring for a large set of customers for several weeks.
What is LTS?
LTS stands for “long-term support.” It is a term used to describe a software release that is supported with security updates, and bug fixes for an extended period of time. LTS releases are commonly used in enterprise environments or used for critical applications and systems where stability and reliability are important.
What is Cohesity LTS?
Cohesity LTS stands for Cohesity long-term support. It is a type of software release cycle that provides long-term support for enterprise customers who require stability and predictability in their IT environments.
LTS is a designation made to a feature release when specific stringent quality and stability requirements are met. From the moment a feature release earns a LTS designation, it is referred to as an LTS release. Our goal is to have two LTS releases available to customers at any given time.
The LTS releases are supported for a minimum of twelve months from the date of LTS designation, and a minimum of six months of overlapping coverage between two LTS releases, and are available to all customers. Customers using LTS releases are encouraged to upgrade to the latest maintenance release, which delivers fixes and minor enhancements for the LTS release as each maintenance release becomes available.
Benefits to upgrading to a LTS version
LTS releases are particularly useful for organizations that require stability and predictability in their data protection environments, such as those typically seen in the financial, healthcare, and government sectors. These organizations often have strict compliance requirements and cannot afford to take risks with their data management systems.
6.8.1 LTS provides customers with a predictable software release, and clears the path for organizations that require LTS designations and have wanted Cohesity FortKnox.
But, all customers can benefit from our LTS version release and the stability and predictability it offers.
What’s new in 6.8.1 LTS
There are many security updates, patches, and fixes already included in this version. Below is a list of some highlighted features now available in this release:
- For customers protecting Microsoft 365 data, we have added the ability to browse backups and download multiple files and folders from OneDrive backups—or multiple document libraries, files, and folders from SharePoint Online Site backups.
- We have also extended data protection capabilities for Microsoft Teams.
- You can now back up and restore SAP on Oracle databases running on Microsoft Windows using the connector agent.
- Cohesity now supports point-in-time recovery (PITR) of Cassandra databases. Cassandra commit logs are leveraged for PITR to allow a granular, quick, and easy restoration of the database to a specific point in time. PITR helps reduce the RPO for the data in case of accidental user error or data corruption.
- Cohesity now natively integrates with Couchbase to provide data protection for Couchbase deployments. The communication between the Cohesity cluster and the Couchbase databases is managed by the NoSQL & Hadoop service deployed on compute nodes.
- You can now schedule the network bandwidth throttling on the Windows and Linux physical servers registered with the Cohesity cluster. The throttling setting optimizes the data transfer rate from the server to the Cohesity cluster when a Protection Group is run.
- Cohesity now supports backup and recovery of a File Server Role deployed on a Windows Server Failover Cluster.
- You can now choose which disk to back up or exclude in an AHV VM or Protection Group by using the Enable Disk Inclusion/Exclusion option.
- Cohesity CloudArchive (periodic full version) now supports write once, read many (WORM) for Azure external targets. The WORM model ensures that the objects written to these targets cannot be tampered with (deleted or overwritten). The archives created are immutable for the duration configured.
- Cohesity now supports CloudArchive for Azure archive blob when using an Azure Gov subscription.
- Starting from this release, if you enable the SMB Oplocks option on a Cohesity view, the file and directory leasing feature is also enabled on newer clients such as Windows 7 or later, or Windows Server 2008 R2 or later. SMB leasing enables the client to cache file and directory metadata, which improves the overall file-sharing performance.
- You can now gracefully remove nodes, SSD disks, and HDD disks from the Cohesity cluster using the Cohesity CLI. The nodes and disks are removed after the resources used by the Cohesity services running in the Cohesity cluster are optimally reallocated to other available nodes, thereby allowing a controlled and orderly removal.
- New hardware configurations in the C5000 line with a Compute Node are now available.
Security
- For improved security, the RT server is now deprecated and replaced with the Teleport support server. From this release onwards, the primary node in the Cohesity cluster initiates an SSH reverse tunnel with the Teleport support server on TCP port 443 to establish the Support Channel.
For a complete listing of all features, please refer to the 6.8.1 LTS Release Notes found on our documentation site.
Continuing innovation
We are excited to announce our latest LTS release, and our continued innovation in expanded data sources, cloud services, and security enhancements. If you are interested in updating to this version, please consult our documentation, or support, for specific requirements.
