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 |Percona XtraBackup| 2.2.1-alpha1
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Percona is glad to announce the release of |Percona XtraBackup| 2.2.1-alpha1 on March 28th 2014. Downloads are available from our download site `here <http://www.percona.com/downloads/XtraBackup/2.2.1/>`_. This **ALPHA** release, will be available in :ref:`Debian experimental <debian_experimental>` and :ref:`CentOS testing <yum_testing>` repositories. 

This is an **ALPHA** quality release and it is not intended for production. If you want a high quality, Generally Available release, the current Stable version should be used (currently 2.1.8 in the 2.1 series at the time of writing).

This release contains all of the features and bug fixes in :doc:`Percona XtraBackup 2.1.8 </release-notes/2.1/2.1.8>`, plus the following:

New features
------------

 |Percona XtraBackup| has removed the multiple binaries (``xtrabackup_56``, ``xtrabackup_55``, ``xtrabackup``) and now uses single ``xtrabackup`` binary instead for handling backups. Single binary implementation removed the requirement to download server source tarballs and removed different patches which resulted in cleaner code.
 
 |Percona XtraBackup| source layout has been changed to implement the single binary. |Percona XtraBackup| code can now be found in :file:`storage/innobase/xtrabackup`.

 |Percona XtraBackup| implemented support for `Backup Locks <http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-server/5.6/management/backup_locks.html#backup-locks>`_.

 |Percona XtraBackup| can now store :ref:`backup history <storing_history>` on the server itself in a special table created for that purpose. 

 ``innobackupex-1.5.1`` symlink has been removed, instead |innobackupex| binary should be used.

 |Percona XtraBackup| has removed the ``build.sh`` script and it's now :ref:`built with CMake <compiling_xtrabackup>`. 

 |Percona XtraBackup| has been rebased on |MySQL| 5.6.16.

Bugs Fixed
----------

 Information about tool version used to take the backup was added by implementing :ref:`backup history <storing_history>` feature. Bug fixed :bug:`1133017`.
 
 If an XtraDB-based binary was used to a backup an |InnoDB| database, it will convert it to |XtraDB| by adding the ``XTRADB_1`` marker in the dictionary header page and by adding the ``SYS_STATS`` table. Bug fixed :bug:`988310`.
 
Other bugs fixed: :bug:`721690`, :bug:`1255899`, :bug:`1255901`, :bug:`1268300`, and :bug:`788316`.
