This update is for HYPER Echo, HYPER Edge G2, and HYPER Core 1000T series.


SynetoOS 5.2.1 introduces the improved User Interface with huge improvements in speed and responsiveness. Also the new Dashboard brings all the important metrics in front of you as soon as you login. With your feedback we have redesigned the Replication overview to give a much better observability of all replication tasks. More importantly though, there are 3 new security features: 2-factor authentication, Continuous Authentication to confirm identity for critical actions, and a banning mechanism to prevent brute force attacks. And finally, this update includes the new secure technology for remote support operations.


We’re also expanding the languages we support. ¡SynetoOS ahora habla español! 


Under the hood, there are hundreds of improvements and re-designs that won’t be visible to the users. All these prepare SynetoOS 5 architecture for a faster pace of updates to give you the new technologies and features coming this year. 

Lastly, this update brings numerous fixes and improvements for replication, data retention, recovery, security, stability, as well as the user interface. 


What’s new


Security

SynetoOS 5.2.1 brings you 3 new features aimed at fortifying Syneto appliances against threats:

- 2-Factor Authentication: To increase the security of your business applications SynetoOS Web UI adds a 2-factor authentication with an aim to prevent potential attackers from accessing your IT infrastructure.

- Continuous Authentication: To further increase the resistance to malicious activities we're adding an additional security layer when performing the critical actions that can result in data loss or business application downtime.

- Banning Mechanism: To maximize the protection of your IT infrastructure SynetoOS analyzes if some one is brute forcing their way into the Web UI and bans them to prohibit any further login attempts. 


Streamlined VM Restore 

Based on your feedback we have simplified the recovery process to make the VM restores faster and more intuitive. The new, improved way to restore VMs works both for on-premises and for Syneto CloudGate scenarios. No more need to initiate replications and cloning before you restore. With SynetoOS 5.2.1 you simply select the replicated Recovery Point and tell SynetoOS where you want to restore your VM.


Syneto Web UI 

Along with the tremendous improvements in the UI speed and responsiveness, SynetoOS 5.2.1 brings all the important information in front of you with multiple improvements in the redesigned Dashboard:

  • Improved the “Summary” widget 
  • Added the “Compute resources consumption” widget  
  • Added the “Storage pools Utilization” widget 
  • Added the “Protection and replication tasks” widget 
  • Added the “Replication tasks overview” widget


Note: The detailed information from the “Storage consumption details” widget i.e. data integrity and space efficiency information have been moved to the “Pools” page.


Also, we have added 2 important controls to the Syneto Web UI: 

  • Ability to Shut down, Restart, and enter Maintenance mode for the ESXi hosts  
  • Ability to Shut down and Restart the Guest OS inside the VMs



Secure remote support with Zero Trust, MFA, and full security audit

We are committed to maximize the security and uptime of your infrastructure. To resolve issues quicker  and make remote support access 100% secure we have implemented the new remote support engine built around these core abilities:


  • 1-Click authorization for support team access in the SynetoOS web UI
  • Zero trust method of connecting to customer’s machines with multi factor authentication.
  • Added support for connections into restricted environments that do not allow SSH, or ones behind non-transparent HTTPS proxies. 
  • Audit for every single connection, with session recordings and playback.
  • Enroll Windows machines in the customer's location, with session screen recording.
  • Optimized reliability for unstable network connections. 


Resolved issues


Security

Improved: The process of SSL Certificate generation after IP or domain name is changed from the UI or CLI.

Improved: Security of the user authentication process at login stage.

Improved: SynetoOS prevents the banned users from accessing the login screen. The web UI is displaying a ban description message instead without proceeding to the login screen. 

Protection, Cloning & Recovery

Improved: Improved the Recovery user experience by presenting a faster and more intuitive way to restore VMs both on-premises and from Syneto CloudGate. 

Improved: 'Convert to original' action is disabled for clones from replicas and external VMs. The Web UI will display a tooltip "Cannot convert to original a Recovery Point for a VM whose datastore is not stored locally".

Improved: Added automatic Syneto cluster configuration backup that operates every 15 minutes by default.

Improved: Implemented the option to set the protection frequency to every 1 minute.

Fixed: a bug that resulted in the Retention policy for external VM not working.

Fixed: a bug that resulted in VM Cloning getting stuck on the Registration stage.

Fixed: inability to clone/recover a VM with the same MAC address as the original VM.



File Level Recovery

Fixed: restoring files of one VM by mounting them as an ISO to another VM.

Fixed: recovering files through attaching the ISO to another VM. 


Replication 

Improved: Replica deletion process.

Improved: the replication engine for achieving significant replication performance improvements.

Improved: the replication logging for faster diagnostics in case of issues. 

Fixed: bugs causing the Recovery Point retention to work incorrectly. 

Fixed: bugs causing issues with Replication scheduling.

Fixed: in some configurations HYPER Echo not performing replications and not showing failed replications.

Fixed: a bug that caused the replication task to remain in an infinite loading state after restart SynetoOS.



Networking

Improved how SynetoOS handles a network changes and re-mounts datastores to streamline the user experience when moving the appliance from the reseller network to end user network. 



SynetoOS Web UI, Monitoring and Alerting

Improved: Pools page has new information added.

Improved: Dashboard - Summary widget.

Improved: Credentials and support status processing for Syneto Virtual Appliance.

Improved: Added the capability to shut down and restart guest OS from the UI.

Fixed: inability to perform “Copy to new VM” for Windows and Ubuntu machines.

Fixed: a UI behavior that allowed to run an integrity check for a suspended storage pool resulting in an indefinitely running operation. Suspended storage pools will now not allow an integrity check action.

Fixed: a Post-Update Error appearing in systems with high numbers of VMs and RPs - the VMs page showed an error and not display correctly.

And other minor UI improvements and bugfixes.



Localization 

Spanish language added to the SynetoOS Web UI.



Known Issues

The Protection overview widget in the Syneto Web UI will always display one unprotected VM. This is caused only by the fact that SynetoOS VM is included in the total count of VMs to protect and should not be a concern to the users. All VMs managed by the HYPER Core appliance are protected as usual. The SynetoOS VM itself is protected with a different mechanism and that protection is not displayed in the UI. The upcoming SynetoOS version will fix how protected VMs are calculated.   


During the update from SynetoOS 5.1.5 to 5.2.1 the Web UI will experience rendering issues caused by a radical change to the frontend of SynetoOS 5.2.1. The rendering issue does not affect the update process and can be cleared with clearing the browser cache (Ctrl + Shift + R on Windows, or Cmd + Shift + R on Mac). Should the issue persist after the update, reach out to support. 


When updating Syneto appliances with 64GB of RAM and 8GB of RAM assigned to SynetoOS, the appliance will either freeze or work extremely slow after the OS update.

Workaround: Before performing the update, SynetoOS RAM needs to be increased to 16GB by modifying the SynetoOS VM settings directly in the vSphere Console. 


Web UI users won’t be able to edit the network connection settings if mounted datastores are connected over that network.

Workaround: Edit the network connection settings from the vSphere Web UI.


A VM deleted through vSphere Web UI will appear as an undeletable ghost in Syneto Web UI.

Workaround: users should only delete VMs from the Syneto Web UI. If this error already occurred - reach out to support to fix this issue.


If a Syneto appliance that was just activated is moved to a different network which does not have internet access, it will ask for activation again. 

Workaround: Please reach out to the support team to address the situation.


After user has cloned and recovered a VM,  the deprecated VM clone cannot be deleted with the following error message: “Cannot delete the virtual machine with existing clones. Delete the clones or perform 'Convert to original' on the clones.“

Workaround: Reach out to support to fix this issue. 


The Help page does not display the button to open a support ticket. 

Workaround: To open a support ticket users have to visit the Support Portal.



Ongoing Improvements and Future Releases


SynetoOS 5.2.1 continues the series of ongoing updates and new features from Syneto. Your feedback is extremely valuable to help us in our commitment to provide an excellent operating system. Definitely try out the new security features and the UI responsiveness. Share your feedback and thoughts to help us shape SynetoOS's future features to bring the maximum value for you.