Release Notes

Release Date: December 14, 2022

VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore utilities are released separately from VMware Greenplum (as of Backup and Restore v1.13.0), and are updated independently of the core server.

Version 1.27.0

VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore version 1.27.0 is a minor release that introduces new features and resolves a number of issues.

Platform Support

VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore is compatible with these Greenplum Database versions:

VMware Greenplum 4.3.22 and later
VMware Greenplum 5.5.0 and later
VMware Greenplum 6.0.0 and later
VMware Greenplum 7.0.0-beta.0 and later

Software Component Versions

This release includes the following utilities:

gpbackup v1.27.0
gpbackup_helper v1.27.0
gprestore v1.27.0
gpbackup_manager v1.5.3
Backup/Restore Plugin API
gpbackup_ddboost_plugin v1.7.0
gpbackup_s3_plugin v1.8.1

See Data Domain Boost for Data Domain Boost support information.

See Known Issues for a list of issues known to exist in this release.

See Differences Compared to Open Source Greenplum Backup and Restore for the list of features that are only in VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore.

See Release Numbering Conventions for a description of the VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore release numbering scheme.

gpbackup v1.27.0

New Feature

gpbackup includes support for Greenplum 7.0 Beta.

Note
For compatibility with Greenplum 7 Beta, you must obtain the gpbackup binary from the compressed tarball available on the VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore download site. Do not use the .gppkg archive to obtain the binary.

Resolved Issues

[32576] Resolves an issue in which gpbackup was incorrectly backing up the DISTRIBUTED BY clause for materialized views.

gpbackup_helper v1.27.0

No changes since VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore version 1.25.0.

gprestore v1.26.0

New Feature

gprestore includes support for Greenplum 7.0 Beta.

Note
For compatibility with Greenplum 7 Beta, you must obtain the gprestore binary from the compressed tarball available on the VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore download site. Do not use the .gppkg archive to obtain the binary.

Resolved Issues

[13] Resolves an issue where tables previously created with the DISTRIBUTED REPLICATED option may have duplicated data loaded upon restore when using gprestore’s --resize-cluster option.
[38]: Resolves an issue in which gprestore would fail when using the --resize-cluster, --single-data-file and --plugin-config options when attempting to restore from a smaller segment count cluster, to a larger segment count cluster.
[39]: Resolves an issue in which gprestore would hang when using the --resize-cluster and --backup-dir options while attempting to restore from a larger segment count cluster to a smaller segment count cluster.

gpbackup_manager v1.5.3

No changes since VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore version 1.26.0.

Backup/Restore Plugin API

No changes since VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore version 1.19.0.

gpbackup_ddboost_plugin v1.7.0

No changes since VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore version 1.24.0.

gpbackup_s3_plugin v1.8.1

No changes since VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore version 1.24.0.

Data Domain Boost

This release of gpbackup and gprestore supports Data Domain Boost for backup on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This table lists the supported versions of DDOS, Data Domain Boost SDK, and BoostFS.

DDOS	Data Domain Boost	BoostFS	Anticipated End of Support^*
7.7	7.7	7.7	31 Oct 2024
7.6	7.6	7.6	31 May 2024
7.5	7.5	7.5	28 Feb 2024
7.4	7.4	7.4	31 Dec 2023
7.2	7.2	7.2	31 May 2023
7.1	7.1	7.1	31 Jan 2023

*The Data Domain Boost plugin support matrix conforms to the end-of-support dates published by Dell.

Note: In addition to the DDOS versions listed in the previous table, gpbackup and gprestore support all minor patch releases (fourth digit releases) later than the certified version.

Known Issues

When restoring a larger segment count cluster to a smaller segment count cluster using the --resize-cluster and --backup-dir options, users must manually move their data files to the correct directories in order for the restore to be successful.
When using gprestore with the --incremental and --data-only command line options on Greenplum Database version 5.28.1 or earlier, the restore may fail during the truncate phase if a table in the restore set contains a foreign key referencing a different table. This Greenplum server side fix is included in version 5.28.2 and later, and does not require a change in gpbackup or gprestore.
Greenplum Backup and Restore versions 1.21.0 and 1.22.0 are incompatible with Centos 6 (glibc 2.12) and SLES 11 (glibc 2.11). The workaround is to upgrade to version 1.23.0 or later.
When attempting to restore data from Greenplum 4.3.x/5.x/6.x (prior to Greenplum v6.14.1 and v5.28.6), views with anyarray typecasts are not restorable. From VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore v1.20.3, gpbackup generates an error when such views are detected.

Workaround: On the original cluster, identify any views that exhibit this symptom, using a query similar to:
```
SELECT relname AS anyarray_views 
                  FROM pg_class WHERE relkind = 'v' AND oid >= 16384 AND (pg_get_viewdef(oid) 
                  LIKE '%::anyarray%') IS TRUE; 
```
Then select option 1 or 2:
1. Using the backup set with the errors, run gprestore with the --on-error-continue flag. The affected views will not be re-created. After the restore completes, re-create each VIEW using your original VIEW definition.
2. Drop each affected VIEW on the original Greenplum cluster. Take another backup of the older cluster and run gprestore on the new cluster. Finally, recreate the VIEW on the new cluster using the original VIEW definition.
When attempting to restore data from Greenplum 4.3.x/5.x into Greenplum 6.x, if the restore involved a table distributed by character(n)or char(n) using the legacy bpchar hash operator, the restore would fail. This issue has been resolved in Greenplum Database 6.12. Upgrade to the latest Greenplum release to avoid this issue.
gprestore does not support restoring a backup that contains partitioned tables where the table is created with a non-reserved keyword that is used as a partition name. For example, the non-reserved keyword at is used as a partition name in this SUBPARTITION TEMPLATE clause fragment:
```
... 
              SUBPARTITION TEMPLATE
              ( SUBPARTITION "at" VALUES ('usa'),
              ...
```
gpbackup backs up the partitioned table, but gprestore returns an error when attempting to restore the table.

Before performing a backup with gpbackup, you must ensure that partitioned tables do not use any of these non-reserved keywords as a partition name:

ADD, ALTER, ALWAYS, AT, ATTRIBUTE, CATALOG, COMMENTS, CONFIGURATION, CONFLICT, CONTINUE, CURRENT, DATA, DAY, DENY, DEPENDS, DICTIONARY, DISCARD, DOCUMENT, DXL, EVENT, EXTENSION, FAMILY, FILESPACE, FILTER, FULLSCAN, FUNCTIONS, HOUR, IDENTITY, IGNORE, IMPORT, INITPLAN, INLINE, LABEL, LEAKPROOF, LOCKED, LOGGED, MAPPING, MATERIALIZED, METHOD, MINUTE, MONTH, NOCREATEEXTTABLE, OFF, ORDERED, ORDINALITY, OVER, PARALLEL, PARSER, PASSING, PLANS, POLICY, PROGRAM, RANDOMLY, READABLE, READS, RECURSIVE, REF, REFRESH, REJECT, REPLICATED, ROOTPARTITION, SECOND, SEQUENCES, SERVER, SKIP, SNAPSHOT, SQL, STANDALONE, STRIP, TABLES, TEXT, TRANSFORM, TYPES, UNLOGGED, VALIDATION, VARYING, VIEWS, WEB, WHITESPACE, WITHIN, WITHOUT, WRAPPER, WRITABLE, XML, YEAR, YES
A gprestore operation using the --redirect-schema option fails if gprestore attempts to restore an index in a schema and the name of the index is the name of the schema followed by a '.' (period). For example, this CREATE INDEX command creates the index named test. on a table in the schema test. The index is in the schema test.
```
CREATE INDEX "test." ON test.mytbl USING btree (i);
```
If the index and table are backed up with gpbackup, restoring the backup with this gprestore command fails because gprestore fails to restore the test. index.
```
gprestore --timestamp <timestamp> --redirect-schema foo2
```
Beginning with versions 4.3.33 and 5.19, Greenplum Database checks that the distribution key for a table is a prefix of any unique index key. This policy is not in place for Greenplum Database versions before 4.3.33 or 5.19, and it is possible to create a backup of a database from one of these earlier versions with unique indexes that do not comply with the policy. When you restore such a backup to a Greenplum Database version that does enforce the policy:
- If the unique index is for a primary key constraint, Greenplum Database automatically modifies the table's distribution policy if the table has no data.
- In other cases, creating a unique index with a key that does not begin with the table's distribution key fails. This issue affects restoring backups made from Greenplum Database 4.3.32.0, 5.18.0, or earlier to a Greenplum Database version 4.3.33.0, 5.19.0, 6.0, or later system. The issue affects the gprestore, gpdbrestore, and pg_restore utilities.

Differences Compared to Open Source Greenplum Backup and Restore

VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore includes all of the functionality in the open source Greenplum Backup github repository and S3 storage plugin repository and adds:

Greenplum backup plugin for DD Boost
Greenplum gpbackup_manager utility
Greenplum Backup and Restore installation file in gppkg format

Release Numbering Conventions

The VMware Greenplum Backup and Restore distribution release number indicates the type of the release.

The first number is the gpbackup/gprestore major release number. For example, given the release number, 1.16.0, the major release number is 1.
The second number is the minor release number. Given the release number 1.16.0, the minor release number is 16. This number increments when new features are added to the gpbackup/gprestore utilities.
The third number is the maintenance release number. This number increments when the gpbackup/gprestore utilities included in the distribution contain fixes without new features, or if one or more components included in the distribution, such as gpbackup_manager and the backup storage plugins, have been updated.

The release versions of the components included in the distribution, such as gpbackup_manager and the backup storage plugins, are separate from the distribution version, but follow the same numbering scheme as the distribution.