Migration from Veeam 6.5&vSphere 4.1 to Veeam 8.0&vSphere5.5

[zhang_johnson]

Dear Experts,

Current we are running Veeam Backup&Replication with vSphere 4.1. Both of their versions are out of support. So we decided to migrate the whole environment to a new system.

The new system will be deployed on top of new Cisco UCS servers and new EMC SAN storage (current system are running on three NEC servers an old NEC direct attached SAN storage). And will install Veeam Backup&Replication 8.0 and vSphere 5.5. all of the current software license will be reused. We also have extended our support of Veeam and vSphere.

The migration plan is:

1.Install and configure the new system, with vSphere 5.5 and Veeam 8.0. The current system is still running as well.
2.Upgrade the Veeam license from 6.5 to 8.0, and install on the new Veeam backup server. Add the new vCenter server and ESXi servers to the new Veeam 8.0 backup server.
3.Add the old vCenter server to the new Veeam backup server. It is also still being connected by the current Veeam 6.5 backup server.
4.the migration will be processed in several batches, so the current backup server and vSphere cluster will be running for a while.
5.Disable the backup jobs for those virtual machines that will be migrated to the new system.
6.Copy the backup files of those virtual machines from the old Veeam backup repository to the new Veeam backup repository. so that the new Veeam backup server does not need to backup all of the data from the source.
7.Import the copied backup files into the new Veeam backup server.
8.Configure replication jobs for those virtual machines and use the copied backup files as seeds.
9.failover the replication jobs.

My question is that will this plan work, and that is there any risks with this plan ? for example:

1. Will the license be OK? coz the new veeam backup server 8.0 and the current Veeam backup 6.5 will be running simultaneously, and they will be using the same license(different versions of course).
2. Is that OK to connect one vCenter server to two different Veeam backup servers, and they are different versions.
3. Can the new Veeam 8.0 backup server import the backup files copied from the Veeam 6.5 backup repository?
4. Does Veeam support replication VMs from vSphere 4.1 to vSphere 5.5? all VMs are version 7 and have no RDM disks.

Thanks!

[foggy]

You plan looks fine. A couple of comments below.

7.Import the copied backup files into the new Veeam backup server.

Instead of import, you should perform a repository rescan. Backups will be imported and you will be able to use them for replica seeding.

9.failover the replication jobs.

Consider using planned failover procedure to avoid any data loss during migration.

1. Will the license be OK? coz the new veeam backup server 8.0 and the current Veeam backup 6.5 will be running simultaneously, and they will be using the same license(different versions of course).

This should be ok.

2. Is that OK to connect one vCenter server to two different Veeam backup servers, and they are different versions.

No issues with that.

3. Can the new Veeam 8.0 backup server import the backup files copied from the Veeam 6.5 backup repository?

Yes.

4. Does Veeam support replication VMs from vSphere 4.1 to vSphere 5.5? all VMs are version 7 and have no RDM disks.

Yes, such replication is fully supported.

[zhang_johnson]

Thanks Foggy!