Best way to action vSphere upgrade to 5.5b

[CaptainFred]

Hi,

I need to update vSphere both in production and at DR. Current situation is production is 5.0.0 (Enterprise) and DR 5.1.0 (Essentials Plus). I am replicating from production to DR without any problems with VBR 7 R2. Both sites have a vCenter. My replication jobs point at the DR vCenter.

What should I do first? Should I update DR to 5.5 then production from 5.0 to 5.5 (jumping 5.1 completely)?
Is VBR version independent to a certain extent?
Anything to be aware of in relation to VBR?
Will it want to re-calc digests after the update at DR and/or production (I hope not because last time this took 5 days constantly!)?
I'm replicating from an older version to a newer version so I assume I should update DR first then do production to match?

Also, I read in an old thread (so may not be correct now with VBR 7) that if I startup a replica VM, make a change, then shut it down and continue replication that the replica VM would be corrupt/unusable because VBR wouldn't be aware of the changes and would continue replication regardless unaware of the changes I'd made. Is this true? (I know I should use SureReplica instead of manually booting it up but have problems getting it working atm).

Thanks
Simon

[foggy]

Will it want to re-calc digests after the update at DR and/or production (I hope not because last time this took 5 days constantly!)?

Depends on the upgrade procedure. In-place vCenter upgrade should not change VMs morefID and affect existing jobs, while migration to a new vCenter will require mapping jobs to existing replica VMs (which will cause all previous restore points to be merged).

I'm replicating from an older version to a newer version so I assume I should update DR first then do production to match?

You can replicate between different host versions, given that VM virtual hardware version is compatible. So no issues replicating to the lower vSphere version with this requirement met.

Also, I read in an old thread (so may not be correct now with VBR 7) that if I startup a replica VM, make a change, then shut it down and continue replication that the replica VM would be corrupt/unusable because VBR wouldn't be aware of the changes and would continue replication regardless unaware of the changes I'd made. Is this true?

This is not valid starting Veeam B&R v6, where the way of storing replica restore points as snapshots was introduced. All changes will be written into the new snapshot and replication job will not be affected.

[CaptainFred]

So if I update DR to 5.5 then production from 5.0 to 5.5 (jumping 5.1 completely) it would be fine?

This is not valid starting Veeam B&R v6, where the way of storing replica restore points as snapshots was introduced. All changes will be written into the new snapshot and replication job will not be affected.

Ok so I could boot up a replica VM, make any changes, shut it down, boot it up again, make more changes, shut it down again and when replication runs again the changes I had made would all be lost and the VM would be 100% identical to the production VM?

Thanks

[foggy]

So if I update DR to 5.5 then production from 5.0 to 5.5 (jumping 5.1 completely) it would be fine?

Yes.

Ok so I could boot up a replica VM, make any changes, shut it down, boot it up again, make more changes, shut it down again and when replication runs again the changes I had made would all be lost and the VM would be 100% identical to the production VM?

Yes, this is how it works.