We are pleased to announce availability of the SolarWinds® Backup 18.2 release.

This release is focused on stability and background performance, resolving some customer reported issues and specific improvements for BMR (Bare Metal Recovery / Recovery Console) side.

NOTE: If you are one of our Software Only partners, and use your own storage nodes, make sure to read the important message about the storage node software below.

Bare Metal Recovery updates.

• BMR boot image is now based on the latest version of Windows PE. (Preinstallation Environment)
This is the latest build offered by Microsoft, to fully support the newest operating systems, including Windows Server 2016 and the latest Windows 10 builds.

• Improved configuration
Previously, during BMR boot, the initial network configuration menu would close as soon as the Backup Manager was started, now this configuration menu remains open, in order to allow you to reinitialize settings / shares / etc.

• The ability to inject additional drivers using a network share.
From the network configuration menu you can now map a connection to a shared network drive. On that share, simply create a folder called AdditionalDrivers and drop your Windows 10 / Server 2016 compatible drivers here. This folder will be automatically scanned and the found drivers will be used if needed during the restore process.

• Improved Boot Mode Compatibility
In order to reduce complexity of choosing the correct boot mode (UEFI / MBR) we now analyze the recovery environment early in the BMR process and notify you if we detect that the current selected boot mode is incompatible with the disk configuration from the latest backup session.

• VMware drivers injected by default
As of this release, VMware drivers are automatically included in the drivers list for the Windows PE image. There is no need to manually add these to the restore process when using the .ISO image to perform a BMR of a guest OS in a VMware environement.

• BMR Reboot Option
We have added a reboot option to the BMR network configuration menu to simplify a restart of the target system when physical access to the system or Virtual Machine is limited.

• Launch Backup Manager in full-screen mode
The Backup Manager now starts in full-screen mode, so everything is shown in one single interface, and is easily accessible.

• Regional keyboard layouts added to BMR
Additional keyboard layouts have been added to the supported keyboard lists, allowing you to choose your own. This is specifically helpful if you set your Security Code / Encryption Key using specific characters that might be regionally bound.

• Option to start a command prompt from boot menu
With this release, we have added a command prompt option to the network configuration menu, allowing you to execute additional system commands / tasks, helping you to perform a proper restore.

• Improved proxy support for BMR
Proxy support is now available in environments with a limited set of whitelist rules. While proxy support was already available, we’ve improved compatibility. You should be able to whitelist the cloudbackup.management infrastructure by adding (with some additional wildcards, depending on the proxy you use) *.cloudbackup.management or *cloudbackup.management to your whitelist to allow for proper backup, restore and BMR sessions.

• Automatic Debug level logging during BMR
When booting BMR with the .ISO image, we will now automatically enable debug level logging when network share is connected and write logs to that location for troubleshooting purposes.

When booting BMR via USB, we will now automatically enable debug level logging and store those logs on the USB media for use by technical support.

• Continous VDR improvement
The use of multiple (high frequent) backup schedules could have interfered with the continuous restore process (within 5 minutes after the finalization of the original backup). This is now resolved.

• OneDrive (Microsoft) is now direct connected in backup
In the previous version, when using the remotely stored version of OneDrive (all files in cloud, only opened files are downloaded), OneDrive folder was interpreted as a symlink on these systems, not allowing the selection to be backed up. Now the symlink is interpreted as a regular directory, processing all ‘locally stored’ files for backup. Files already only on OneDrive are not backed up, but can be restored from Microsoft. Advise for proper backup handling is to disable the ‘store on OneDrive only’ option in the OneDrive settings.

(**) : The latest Storage Node software installers can be found in the Advanced Download section of the Management Console or on the download section of our website. A video walk through is available for Windows and Linux storage nodes.