Plugin version dependencies unclear

[mdiver]

Question is regarding the plugins for SAP-HANA, SAP on Oracle (Linux only), Oracle RMAN (Windows and Linux), IBM Db2 and MS-SQL.
Having done quite a few upgrades for larger customers recently, I had to learn some non-obvious peculiarities about plugin compatibility:

It says so the help center: “Veeam Backup & Replication supports the latest two major versions of Veeam Plug-ins.”
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

The challenge lies in the term “major version”. To me, that would have meant the number before the decimal point. For example, 12 for 12.x, 11 for 11.x.
It turns out, this is not the case. The next sentence in the help center link above says: “Veeam Backup & Replication 12.1 supports Veeam Plug-in 12.1 and 12”.

Obviously Veeam considers some of the updates that only change the decimal of the version number still to be a major update.

Since 12.1 is considered a major upgrade, if you jump from 11 to 12.1 , for example, be aware that your plugins won’t work anymore. You would have to upgrade them first.
The same goes e.g. for 11a (11.0.1.1261), which surprisingly is also considered a major upgrade. Although here the change is only after the second comma.

VBR 12.0 GA (12.0.0.1420) won’t work with an early v11 plugin like e.g. 11.0.0.825.
We just faced that a week ago, when a customer went from 11GA to 12.0, thus bringing all his HANA plugin backups to a halt.
Another went from 11A to 12.1 which is also not compatible.

There is a comprehensive list of released plugin versions:
https://www.veeam.com/kb4474

Unfortunately, the table does not indicate compatibility with the VBR version. This would be my first "feature request".
Also an automatic compatibility check within VBR should be possible, as the plugins backup to VBR and should be logged there.

Thanks,
Mike

[PetrM]

Hi Mike,

It was indeed a mistake in our user guide, as a quick fix we already removed the word "major". We're now discussing further improvements, I agree that the current documentation structure is a little bit misleading.

Unfortunately, the table does not indicate compatibility with the VBR version. This would be my first "feature request".

Noted, we're already working on it. The request absolutely makes sense.

However, on the same page, we say:

For example, Veeam Backup & Replication 12.1 supports Veeam Plug-in 12.1 and 12.

But maybe we just overestimated the role of this specific sentence which goes right after the first one. It looks like it was just ignored because of "major" in the first sentence.

Thanks!