Upgrade from B&R 6.5 to 8.0

[r.mckeon]

I am planning on upgrading from Veeam B&R 6.5 Enterprise (with Enterprise Manager) to Veeam B&R 8.0 Enterprise (with Enterprise Manager).

I have two major queries:

1. If support has expired on my Veeam 6.5 license, once I purchase Veeam 8.0 (which comes with support), can I get technical support during the upgrade process?

2. I have summarized the upgrade procedure I plan to undertake below...can you give me your thoughts and suggestions?

Current setup:
- Veeam B&R 6.5 and Enterprise Manager on a Windows Server 2008 R2 physical machine.
- 13 VM backup jobs (vSphere) using DirectSAN mode with destination being an iSCSI repository on a Dell EqualLogic SAN.
- Symantec BE 12 currently used for disk-to-tape backups, copying the Veeam backup files from the iSCSI repository onto the tape media. BE 12 is installed on the same physical machine as Veeam.
- Tape drive being used is Dell PowerVault TL2000.
- SAN repository holding the Veeam files and the TL2000 tape are both directly connected to the physical machine via iSCSI.

My plan is to scrap Symantec and do both VM backup jobs and disk-to-tape jobs using Veeam 8.0. These are the (summarized) steps I was thinking of:

1. Take configuration backup of Veeam 6.5
2. Reboot the backup (physical) server and stop all Veeam and Symantec services
3. Uninstall tape drivers from the backup server, and uninstall Symantec BE 12
4. Reboot the backup server and let Windows automatically install the tape drivers
5. Make sure Veeam services are stopped and run the Setup.exe of Veeam 8.0
6. Start with Enterprise Manager, next, next, next until its completed
7. Run Setup.exe again and select Backup & Replication this time. Continue with setup normally.
8. Reboot the backup server.
9. Confirm VM backup jobs are retained and try some restores to test.
10. Set up new tape jobs from scratch to backup from disk to tape.

Makes sense?

[foggy]

1. If support has expired on my Veeam 6.5 license, once I purchase Veeam 8.0 (which comes with support), can I get technical support during the upgrade process?

Yes, sure.

2. I have summarized the upgrade procedure I plan to undertake below...can you give me your thoughts and suggestions?

Overall, you plan looks good. You can also review the step-by-step upgrade procedure outlined in the release notes document (unless you've already done this).

[r.mckeon]

Overall, you plan looks good. You can also review the step-by-step upgrade procedure outlined in the release notes document (unless you've already done this).

Thanks...this reminds me right after the B&R upgrade process I should immediately update to Patch 1.

[foggy]

Yep, this is definitely recommended.