Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
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cerberus
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Upgrading to vSphere 6.0 U1a with ESXi 5.1U3 and 6.0 hosts?

Post by cerberus »

Hello,

We are in the planning stages to upgrade our production and DR location to vSphere 6 U1a, this includes updating all our ESXi hosts to 6.

We have a single vSphere vCenter server VM, this will be upgraded to v6 and it will manager ESXi 5.1U3 and 6.0U1 hypervisors.

We are going to roll out ESXi 6 to DR firs to test, then again to Production. I checked with VMware and vCenter 6 can manage both ESXi 5.1/6.0.

The Production and DR sites are defined as 2 different data centers within vCenter and each has 3 hypervisors.

We are using Veeam B&R 8.0 Update 2, I will apply Update 3 to support 6.0 U1 before I update my virtual infrastructure. But my question is, will this be supported? Is Veeam going to be able to backup my VMs hosted on ESXi 5.1U3 that are managed by vCenter 6?

Right now I have ESXi 5.1 and vCenter 5.1 and all is happy, but we want to upgrade to vSphere 6.
larry
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Re: Upgrading to vSphere 6.0 U1a with ESXi 5.1U3 and 6.0 hos

Post by larry » 1 person likes this post

Just did the same upgrade, same versions. Had both version hosts for a week doing it the way you said. My only issues were licensing. We left the eval license in VMware during the move and migrations as VMware gives you 60 days to load the real ones. For Veeam I needed to unlicensed one host and then add the new host. Every first backup is a full as a new VC has a vm id. When we storage motion between hosts check the EVC modes. With 6 you can up the mode live after the old hosts are gone. We added hardware as well. I applied U3 to Veeam before I started.
Vitaliy S.
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Re: Upgrading to vSphere 6.0 U1a with ESXi 5.1U3 and 6.0 hos

Post by Vitaliy S. »

cerberus wrote:But my question is, will this be supported? Is Veeam going to be able to backup my VMs hosted on ESXi 5.1U3 that are managed by vCenter 6?
Yes, there should be no issues with that. Make sure you just do the in-place upgrade of the vCenter Server to preserve VMs moref IDs to allow incremental job runs.
cerberus
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Re: Upgrading to vSphere 6.0 U1a with ESXi 5.1U3 and 6.0 hos

Post by cerberus »

That's good to know, good information.

I am building a new vCS server because I need to change the underlying operating system as well; so i'll have a new vCS 6 VM on Windows Server 2012 R2. Because this is not going to be a in-place upgrade, the new vCS has its own SQL DB, etc. We'll have 2 vCS servers running for a week or two.

Good point about licensing, VMware will give us 60 days to run in trial mode before I have to switch keys. For Veeam I have the 3 Host / 2 CPU license, it shouldn't be an issue because because we have our Production/DR site, we don't backup the DR; so during my "test run" in DR Veeam won't be affected; only when I move my Production hosts to the new vCS.

When I switch my 3 hosts in Production to the new vCS, i'll need to update Veeam and point it to the new vCS 6 VM. From what I gathered here, at that point because it is a new vCS I will need to do a full backup. Our Nightly jobs are setup as Reverse Incremental (we offload to tape and need full backups every day to be taken off-site).

So the only things to take away are a) Apply Update 3 and b) Full Backup when switching vCS because it has a new ID thing.
jamerson
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Re: Upgrading to vSphere 6.0 U1a with ESXi 5.1U3 and 6.0 hos

Post by jamerson »

i've done the same last week, everything works fine .
the only think you need to check are the licenses , if you have the right ones you are set to go.
foggy
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Re: Upgrading to vSphere 6.0 U1a with ESXi 5.1U3 and 6.0 hos

Post by foggy »

You can contact Veeam technical support team to adjust VM moref IDs to avoid full backups.
Vitaliy S.
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Re: Upgrading to vSphere 6.0 U1a with ESXi 5.1U3 and 6.0 hos

Post by Vitaliy S. »

You can install a new instance of vCenter Server and preserve all moref IDs, by re-using your existing vCenter Server database.
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